Surviving the Aftermath news & patch notes

Greetings survivors!

Our third DLC is now available! “Rebirth” offers a new way to literally transform your colony into a post-apocalyptic paradise! Clear the waters and purify the soil with new terraforming discoveries to bring back the once green fields and lush forests. The journey is not without its perils though, as a new threat is on the rise. A mysterious fungal disease called the blight has infected both animals and plants, creating new challenges for the player. But their wild mutations also hold the key to victory! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/9d70597a6c1def4e5fe2f2f43e9b6c20c3b290a0.png IMAGE: Surviving the Aftermath: Rebirth The DLC includes a modular Blight Lab, which allows players to advance in the new “Discoveries” tech tree. This can be used to unlock new buildings and permanent improvements for your fight against the blight, eventually turning the threat into an advantage. Seeing the colony’s grim and hostile beginnings turn into a beautiful and inviting landscape is truly something special.

Terraforming

New terraformers allow players to transform the barren soil and murky waters into a healthy, vibrant environment. These advanced buildings can be discovered via the Blight Lab, which players unlock after completing a special quest. Once built, you can order its workers to plant new soil within the work area, transforming the very earth patch by patch. The terraformers are fueled by blight samples that you collect from numerous sources during your fight against mutated creatures that seem oddly determined to stop your progress. In addition to striking visuals, terraformed soil offers superior production with fields and water wells in its area. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/52ee5269e66bcf9c06164da7092786b50da31562.png IMAGE: Terraforming the soil

The Blight

The fungal blight is tainting the very soil and everything living on it. It grows fast, infecting animals and plants alike, centering on blight cores, which infect the soil and cause blighted nests, hives and lair to emerge. You’ll see its effects everywhere from strange-looking fungi to enemies that roam the lands. The blight is not without its merits though, as it can be studied and turned into beneficial discoveries in the blight lab. These blight samples can be collected from multiple sources such as carcasses, blighted trees, deposits and even farmable crops and mutated ranch animals.

Blighted creatures

New blighted enemies are a constant, evolving threat to the colony. They spawn from nests, hives and lairs around the colony. The initial encounters with these creatures should pose little problems, but their dangers become stronger as the colony grows. The largest enemies can infect the colonists with an incurable condition with horrific consequences. These creatures can also appear on the world map and might attack your specialists if you cross their path. So stock up on weapons and build guard towers to protect the colony. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/d73b1c76afbeee4b2925a1dc2598bdbe71227dc6.png IMAGE: New enemies

New anti-blight buildings

Rebirth has several new buildings which allow the player to fight against the blight and turn the rapidly mutating threat into an advantage. It all starts after unlocking the new Blight Lab by completing a special quest. This modular building grows in size as you unlock new discovery tiers by supplying it with blight samples to study. Purification Posts clear blighted trees and corpses to extract blight samples from them, but can also clear small pollution patches early in the game. It’s highly polluting, though, so build it on the outskirts of your colony. Its "Exterminators" upgrade allows clearing enemy-spawning nests, hives and lairs for a brief respite from enemy attacks and as an additional source of blight samples. And finally, upgrading your Environmental Station to a new Hazmat Station unlocks the ability to clear the blight cores - the root cause of the infestation. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/eda41badbbcd3a32027214a359efb953323ab9ea.png IMAGE: New buildings

Other Improvements

Scout Towers and Guard Posts have been revamped and are now more efficient than ever before as a stationary line of defense. New attack animations have been added to emphasize their new role. On the world map, some of the early research outpost spots have been turned to regular science locations, allowing easier access to your first science points. Colony has more metal deposits than before and pollution spreads more evenly. Pollution overlay is also now clearer on which areas are affected. Several combat-heavy quests have been pushed back so the player has a better chance of completing them with multiple specialists. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/ef6066b1ab9e69e473849d1f3c6a7734d071750f.jpg IMAGE: Guard posts shooting at blighted creatures On the visual side, buildings remove less foliage when placed, creatíng a nicer-looking colony. Various user interface and usability improvements include “Specialist ready” indicator pulsing faster, more visible blocked tile overlay in build mode, reworked soil overlay color with color-blindness in mind and an “exit vehicle” icon for the vehicle UI. Society list also shows all tradable resources instead of just the first five. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/714cb5d2dac6141785e0cc95a17171029dc39e24.png IMAGE: Community-created specialist

Community-created specialist

A while ago we asked you to design a new specialist. After considering all your wonderful applications, we ended up with "Gloriosa"! She’s a born-and-raised doomsday prepper who turned scavenger and can be selected as a starting specialist in a new game. We’re eager to see you turn the inhospitable wasteland into a lush and green paradise! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/69d343e042e787bee43c94c4eec49d3d2b4911e2.png Surviving the Aftermath: Rebirth is now available both as a part of the Ultimate Colony Edition or separate purchase.

Change Notes

General

• Added a new specialist to the game called Gloriosa.
  • Gloriosa was created by you, the community. She is a born and raised doomsday prepper and can be selected as a starting specialist in a new game. A big thank you to all participants!
• We’ve heard many reports from players that they cannot find enough metal. Because of this, we adjusted the way metal and concrete deposits spawn in the colony.
  • There is now a higher likelihood that metal deposits spawn closer to the starting location. Scouting is still likely necessary, though.
  • Some metal can also be scavenged in the world map.
• Added six new Rebirth DLC related achievements.
  • Tower Defence - Build 5 Guard Posts.
  • Timber! - Cut down 100 blighted trees.
  • Pest Control - Kill 40 blighted creatures.
  • Core of the issue - Destroy a Blight Core.
  • Rebirth - Complete “Rebirth” quest.
  • Post-Apocalyptic Paradise - Terraform the majority of the map.

Gameplay

• Changed the way pollution spreads from pollution deposits and buildings. The pollution area remains mostly unchanged, but the intensity is now spread more evenly.
• Blocked some achievements from unlocking in a custom game. Previously, some achievements could be unlocked by playing a custom game which was not intended.
• Increased the amount of resources shown in the society trade menu. Previously, only six resources were shown, but now it shows everything a society has to offer.
• Consoles only: Fixed an issue that caused Wind Turbine, Martian Wind Turbine, Lightning Rod and Lightning Tower to be unrepairable if Ultimate Colony DLC was enabled. This issue was already fixed on PC versions some time ago.
• Fixed an issue that caused the meteor storm catastrophe to only drop one meteor.
• Fixed an issue that caused the game to get stuck if the camera moved over a combat location when trying to confirm combat victory in the world map.
• Fixed an issue that caused combat disasters (for example rat beetle or boar attacks) to stop working after the endgame quest started.
• Fixed an issue that caused a colonist to get stuck if its workplace was close to the colony border and the colonist had no home.
• Fixed an issue that caused deposit guardian animals to not return to the deposit properly after disengaging from combat.
• Fixed a repair related issue caused by selecting a destroyed building right after a save was loaded.
• Fixed an issue that caused a colonist to get stuck when multiple colonists were gathering resources and the deposit was cleared at the right time.
• Fixed an issue caused by pressing the demolish mode hotkey while hovering a building right after loading a save.
• Fixed an issue that caused the colonist cause of death to be incorrect if it died from combat damage.

Graphics

• Adjusted the colors in soil fertility overlay and in the circle around Water Well to be more color blind friendly.
• Added a combat animation for the Scout Tower and Guard Post.
• Made the red color brighter when placing buildings to make it easier to see unavailable building placement.
• Buildings remove a smaller area of foliage and props around them when placed.
• Added an exit vehicle icon to the vehicle panel.
• Vehicles now show the correct amount of passenger slots available.
• Made the overlay info panel darker and more readable.
• Updated higher resolution icons to multiple places in the game, for example building info, top bar etc.
• Updated two child portraits to higher resolution versions.
• Decreased the light intensity of heatwave catastrophe in the world map.
• Removed the by-product UI element from animals in the ranch that do not produce a by-product.
• Increased the visibility of the wheat crops in fields.
• Updated the model for the Lightning Rod and adjusted the build menu icon accordingly.
• Fixed an issue that caused Martian Wind Turbine to not play animations during winter.
• Fixed an animation issue that caused concrete extractor workers to move out of bounds instead of working in the cabin.
• Fixed an animation issue when moving the camera very close to the radar building.
• Minor polish to the following UI elements:
  • Deposit info panel.
  • Specialist ready indicator in the specialist bar.
  • Specialist action done indicator in the world map.
  • Buttons in the building info panel.
  • Loading bar.
  • Energy and water consumption/production icons.
  • Repair/demolition/overtime mode tooltips.

Balance Adjustments

• Replaced some medicine, weapon and clothing scavenge locations with metal, corn and firewood locations in the world map.
• Removed the lowest tier of science outpost locations and replaced them with regular science point locations that can be scavenged.
• Added a minimum starting date for combat quests. This should make quests a little bit easier in the beginning of the game.
• Adjusted the shooting and reload times of specialists and guards so that they cannot attack repeatedly. Stutter stepping allowed them to attack very quickly.
• Reduced the patrol range of guards in the Guard Post.
• Increased the attack damage and range of the Scout Tower slightly.

For the longest time, you strove to survive the aftermath on planet Earth. Now, thanks to your knowledge, skills, and leadership, you can finally look forward to a new chapter for humankind. “Rebirth” is your mantra, your goal, the dream that will make you overcome old and new challenges, for your survivors and all humanity... Greetings, survivors! We’re almost ready to release something we’ve wanted to share with you for quite some time - our third DLC, Rebirth! It features an all-new way to literally transform your colony via terraforming the very soil it’s built on as well as a new, ever-present threat. Surviving the Aftermath: Rebirth launches on March 16th for PC, Xbox One, and Playstation4 at a suggested retail price of 14.99 USD / 11.99 GBP / 14.99 EUR. More details are to come in the upcoming weeks, but here are its core features:

• The Blight: from threat to resource After decades of exposure to radioactive pollution, a new infestation called Blight has emerged. Mutated fungi have started to infect the animals, causing them to become aggressive and dangerous. This infection has spread through the wasteland and is threatening to take over. You will need to find a cure for the Blight to defend against it. Gather Blight samples, study them in a new research building and make discoveries to unlock new buildings, resources, and upgrades.
• Terraforming: from a wasteland to green pastures Let’s turn this barren land into fertile soil! With the Terraformer, you will be able to welcome new life: the more you terraform, the more your map will turn green and lush with vegetation and animals. Be aware of the blighted areas that you will terraform, here, blight monsters will spawn and attack your survivors.
• Blight Lab - plus other new buildings and upgrades “Rebirth” adds three new buildings, three building upgrades, plus an all-new multi-stage Blight lab with its own Research tree. Embark on a quest to find a scientist with the means of fighting against the blight and build the modular Blight Lab to make discoveries to aid and overcome the threat. A Purification post will allow you to remove small pollution deposits and it can be upgraded to an Extermination post to clear blighted nests, hives, and lairs. The Basic Terraformer turns the land into terraformed soil and it can be upgraded to Advanced Terraformer. The Environmental Station becomes the Hazmat station: with it, survivors can clear the blight cores and stop the creatures' attacks. While not a new building, the Guard Posts have received significant improvements and will now be more critical than ever when defending your colony.

Watch the reveal trailer on YouTube:

Greeting survivors! We have just released our patch for the “Shattered Hope” DLC—including some bigger changes as well. Here we will go through them with some brief explanations as to why they have been made. As usual, the full patch notes can be found at the end of this post. DIFFICULTY REWORKED We have gone and reduced the DLC’s overall difficulty in many different ways. If you look at the Hope bar for example, you can see that it looks a bit different than before. The “safe zone” where no negative effects can happen is larger and the Hope levels have been adjusted accordingly. This means there are now bigger and clearer changes between the levels, but also much more time before Hope becomes a serious issue. This allows players to divide their attention to other things, without Hope constantly demanding actions by causing Anguish. We have also done multiple smaller adjustments to balance the difficulty. For example, the negative impact of disasters and catastrophes has been reduced. Positive Hope effects have been added to accepting survivor groups and when gate combat is won without the bandits breaching the gate. Trauma centers now also offer two patient slots, which should alleviate the situations where many colonists are in anguish at once. The negative event results and the cost of feasts have been slightly tweaked to a more balanced direction as well. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/b2808a65b5dbe3fec72a43d3532fc11931ecc7d7.png Trauma centers now offer two patient slots instead of one. HOPE AND HAPPINESS CONNECTED One major rework ties Hope together with Happiness, which was heavily requested by our players. Previously we had a system where Hope would drop daily with no way to counter the nasty effect. Now, the player can counter this effect and even turn it into a positive, just by keeping the colony happy! This is easier said than done however, and there is a catch. “Challenge” selected in the pregame determines how much Happiness will affect Hope. With harder difficulties, low Happiness also hits the colony harder. This is one of the ways we hope those players who like a bit of difficulty can still challenge themselves. Connecting Happiness and Hope also gives the players a chance to eventually progress into a situation where hope is less demanding when the colonists feel satisfied in the safety of the colony. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/0640a3dc39d8cf9c167fb293a28e7108ca263106.png The daily Hope effect is now tied to the difficulty level selected in the pregame. OTHER CHANGES One of the smaller adjustments we made was to push the start of the DLC’s questline to appear a little earlier in the game. While this change allows the quest to spawn already at day 29, the random nature of the quests can cause it to be slightly delayed. Always remember to check your side quest status when waiting for a specific one—there can only be one side quest active at any given time! We also want to encourage our players to use the building overtime feature to overcome the new challenges, which is why we added some lunar dust as a reward to the starter event. This allows the players to start boosting production in buildings right away! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/8b32969259bc215276e48c94e82aab92639d1371.png The introduction event now encourages the player to start overtiming buildings with some free lunar dust. If you want to know more details please refer to our patch notes and feel free to ask questions! Once again we thank all of you for your feedback and hope you’ll enjoy the new and improved experience with Surviving the Aftermath ”Shattered Hope”. General

• Daily decrease of hope now scales with game difficulty.
• Easier difficulties still have almost the same baseline daily hope change, but harder difficulties now have a steeper daily decrease.
• This is a way for us to provide a smoother gameplay experience for those who wish to play with easier settings, but still be able to provide a challenge for the daring.
• Daily decrease of hope is now tied to colony happiness.
• Unhappy colony loses hope faster while the hope for a happy colony increases per day.
• The current daily effect of happiness can be seen in the hope bar tooltip.
• Hope bar now functions more accurately.
• Previously, there was some scaling which made the hope drops seem more drastic than they actually were when the hope bar was close to full.
• Adjusted the thresholds for when anguish is given to colonists accordingly.

Gameplay

• Added hope reward when accepting survivor groups.
• Fixed an issue that caused gate combat to not give hope when defeating bandits directly at the gate.
• Many text changes related to Shattered Hope features.
• Added daily effect text to the hope bar tooltip.
• Added overtime text to the Lunar Dust tooltip.
• Tweaked hope description in the hope bar tooltip.
• Tweaked anguish description in the help menu.
• Tweaked the descriptions of Shattered Hope buildings.
• And other smaller text changes.

Balance Adjustments

• Reduced hope impact of all catastrophes and disasters.
• Reduced catastrophe hope impact by around 30%.
• Reduced pollution cloud and space junk disasters’ hope impact by around 30%.
• Reduced moonfall, rat swarm and overcharge disasters’ hope impact by 50%.
• Adjusted the hope impact of most events.
• Reduced the impact of negative event results by 30%.
• Positive event results mostly unchanged.
• Increased patient slot count in Trauma Center from 1 to 2.
• The Shattered Moon quest can now trigger after day 29, this was day 32 previously.
• Please note that the Shattered Moon quest cannot trigger if you already have another regular quest active.
• Slightly decreased the baseline food and plastic cost of the small feast.
• Added and adjusted hope rewards slightly in multiple quests.
• Slightly increased the negative hope impact when abandoning a quest.
• The initial Shattered Moon event now gives 20 Lunar Dust.

Greetings survivors!

Our latest DLC “Shattered Hope” has just been released and we are excited to shed light on its features. Brand new challenges await as fading hope risks the entire colony’s survival. Other improvements include a new moon rock disaster, an ability to boost production with overtime and being able to hold special feasts! A new questline adds interesting buildings and resources to the mix, giving Surviving the Aftermath even more variety than before. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/28f80e5c4c946d8ec7503184d18dd7ce5acedf56.png IMAGE: Surviving the Aftermath: Shattered Hope Let’s first talk about the Moon and the features tied to it. As previously established, the Earth’s Moon shattered at the start of the cataclysm years ago and now the consequences of that can be felt in the colonies. Falling pieces of the Moon can be seen plummeting from the skies at night. However, these moon rocks are not just another hazard but can be gathered and turned into valuable lunar dust. This rare material is in high demand by societies and bandits alike, but its most interesting function is its ability to greatly boost buildings’ efficiency. It allows the use of overtime, hastening production and healing speed for 48 hours! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/5c29c9a0227be0bf87b5db5aa483c54886be1e58.png IMAGE: Lunar dust can be used to increase buildings’ efficiency This all comes in handy when trying to overcome new hope-related challenges. Colonists’ hope for the future is constantly shifting from good to bad to worse. Colonists are disheartened by setbacks such as being defeated in combat, dismissing events or quests and especially catastrophes such as fallout or winter storms. If hope falls too low, the colonists can become anguished. Anguish cannot be treated in normal medical buildings, but requires special treatment at trauma centers. Anguished colonists can eventually become hostile, turning against their peers if they are not treated in time! Recovering from this condition is a lengthy process, so it is wise to try to keep hope from falling into dangerous levels. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/835ba9a6042b2441d16e36dcc06d3c3d41c1fbdd.png IMAGE: Colony hope must be kept high to avoid negative consequences Hope can be increased by completing quests, making the right decisions in events, combat victories and most importantly, holding special feasts. These can be held at the colony square, a new building fit for holding these kinds of festivities. The special feasts can be costly but drastically increase hope and happiness by providing momentary entertainment. To hold larger feasts for larger colonies the building must be upgraded, which can only be done after completing the new questline. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/17ea4d59241d2406bd31a8fc294e4aafd8122f04.png IMAGE: Feast selection at the colony square “The Shattered Moon” quest opens the lore behind the broken moon and how the people of the wasteland have come to exploit its fallen riches. The quest also introduces the mysterious group of bandits some players might recognize from the main quest. These fellows can also sometimes appear at the colony gates demanding lunar dust with the threat of violence. Whilst uncovering their secrets you’ll be unlocking new buildings and resources, such as the med hut and mushroom farm, which can make recovering from anguish much quicker. The med hut can also produce antibodies for treating mutations much faster than before. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/f2b876a25d40be7e834f4c92885d80fc41fcaec7.png IMAGE: “The Shattered Moon” quest illustrations Other improvements include new events, some unique to the DLC and others for the base game for everyone to enjoy. Events coming with the free update aim to make the early game experience a little more varied than before. The colony clock has also gotten a facelift visible to all users, making it easier to track the shift between day and night and when specialists’ action points are replenished. The free update includes balance adjustments, quality of life improvements, bug fixes and new visuals. We have updated over 30 building textures to make them more recognizable and added more colonist portraits for women and children. Additionally, we present our special seasonal content in the spirit of Halloween! Check all improvements and fixes from the changelog(link below). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/8267b5ac0a1d673952bea8b011b913924072a774.png IMAGE: Halloween pack includes new decorations and spooky variations to existing buildings We hope that you’ll have a great time with all the new features, buildings and other improvements in "Shattered Hope". It has a lot to offer whether you’re looking for additional challenges or just more buildings to construct. You can continue your old save or begin a new one to start boosting your production, hold great feasts and mend the broken hope! Surviving the Aftermath: Shattered Hope is available now on Steam, Epic Store, the PlayStation™ Store and Microsoft Store on Xbox. It is also included as a part of the Ultimate Colony Upgrade with more DLC to come later.

Change notes - “Shattered Hope Xbox and PS4 release”

General

• Added Halloween content to the game. Spooky! The content can be toggled on or off in the settings.
• Added Goo Cauldron and Scarecrow decorations that can be unlocked by Prestige.
• Torch, Lantern and all Street Light decorations change to more Halloween themed lights.
• Added jack o'lanterns and other halloween props to colony buildings.
• Added halloween themed hats for colonists.
• Added three new Shattered Hope DLC achievements/trophies:
• Hero of the Wasteland - Complete "The Shattered Moon" quest.
• Mean Boss - Overtime 100 buildings.
• Beacon of Hope - Hold a special feast.
• Memory optimization. These changes improve the stability of the game especially on consoles and low-end PCs.
• Removed unused buildings, shaders and other assets from the build.
• Improved memory management of tutorial popups and help menu images.

Gameplay

• Added six new events. These should improve the early game event variation so that the same events don’t happen that often.
• Improved the way that queued movement works when sending specialists to combat in the World Map. Specialists should no longer get stuck on each other when pathing to a location.
• Happiness effects in events and quests now show an icon instead of the “+10 Happiness” text.
• Added a tooltip for repair tool that displays the amount of resources required to repair a building.
• Added a tooltip for demolish tool that displays the amount of resources gained when demolishing a building.
• Improved the day and night meter to display when night starts and ends.
• Notifications display hours instead of days when there’s less than a day remaining. Previously notifications had texts such as “0 days remaining” and that is now displayed in hours.
• Changed the way that quick tool can be accessed on a controller. Quick tool now has a single button that activates it and then it’s possible to change between repair/demolish/overtime mode with another button.
• Destroyed buildings can now be removed with the demolish tool.
• Well, Well, Well event had a hidden effect that is now visible.
• Fixed an issue that occurred in custom games when the animals option was set to ‘None’ and then selecting a resource deposit in the game.
• Fixed an issue that caused pause and demolish hotkeys to be usable on construction zones that had those functionalities disabled e.g. Campsite could be paused during the intro and would cause a softlock.
• Fixed an issue that occurred when saving and loading the game just as colony combat was about to finish.
• Fixed an issue that caused disasters to disappear after saving and loading a game while the disaster was ongoing.
• Fixed an issue that caused minor disasters and Winter Storm catastrophe to not update properly in the statistics menu.

Graphics

• Added four new child portraits and seven new female portraits for colonists.
• Updated textures for over 30 buildings.
• Added and adjusted animation visuals in most entertainment buildings. For example, Stormdome now has colonists battling in the building while other colonists cheer the fighters on.
• Added DLC icons to save game menu that displays which DLCs are enabled in the save.
• Added a tooltip to main menu DLC buttons that displays if the DLC requires a new game to be active.
• Added a popup to save game menu that informs if activated DLCs cannot be applied to a save that is being loaded.

Balance Adjustments

• Changed the way that scaling works for catastrophes. The goal is to make all catastrophes scale better with game difficulty. Previously catastrophes had the same “effective phase” that affected conditions, damage and other factors.
• Increased the happiness effects in The Great Unknown and Hidden Fortunes events.
• Reduced the fiber cost of Basic Clothing.
• Slightly lowered the protection value of Basic Clothing.
• Very slightly lowered the protection value of Sturdy Clothing.
• Increased fiber production in Fields.

Hello survivors!

It's the spookiest time of year, and we are excited to bring you a free in-game event on Steam and Epic that includes Halloween themed decorations and buildings. This also includes a free patch of some gameplay fixes, such as improvement to the day and night meter to display when night starts and ends, as well as some graphics and balance adjustments like increased fiber production in the fields. What better way to prepare for the moon shattering DLC Shattered Hope that comes out the week after? The event visuals will include:

• Halloween themed hats and masks for colonists.
• Two new decoration "buildings":
• A Scarecrow
• A Cauldron full of nuclear liquids
• Buildings with lights will change their appearance with more Halloween themed lights:
• Regular lights/lanterns in buildings in the game will now turn into Halloween themed lanterns, such as jack-o'-lanterns
• Halloween Decorative lamps

The Halloween event will turn on automatically on the 24th of October, but can of course be turned off in the settings if you prefer playing without it.

Change notes - “Halloween patch”

General

• Added Halloween content to the game. Spooky! The Halloween content is turned on automatically on the 24th of October and turned off on the 7th of November. The content can also be toggled on or off in the settings.
• Added Goo Cauldron and Scarecrow decorations that can be unlocked by Prestige.
• Torch, Lantern and all Street Light decorations change to more Halloween themed lights.
• Added jack o'lanterns and other halloween props to colony buildings.
• Added halloween themed hats for colonists.
• Added six new events. These should improve the early game event variation so that the same events don’t happen that often.

Gameplay

• Improved the way that queued movement works when sending specialists to combat in the World Map. Specialists should no longer get stuck on each other when pathing to a location.
• Added a tooltip for repair tool that displays the amount of resources required to repair a building.
• Added a tooltip for demolish tool that displays the amount of resources gained when demolishing a building.
• Improved the day and night meter to display when night starts and ends.
• Notifications display hours instead of days when there’s less than a day remaining. Previously notifications had texts such as “0 days remaining” and that is now displayed in hours.
• Changed the way that quick tool can be accessed on a controller. Quick tool now has a single button that activates it and then it’s possible to change between repair/demolish/overtime mode with another button.
• Destroyed buildings can now be removed with the demolish tool.
• Fixed an issue that caused pause and demolish hotkeys to be usable on construction zones that had those functionalities disabled e.g. Campsite could be paused during the intro and would cause a softlock.
• Fixed an issue that occurred when saving and loading the game just as colony combat was about to finish.
• Fixed an issue that caused disasters to disappear after saving and loading a game while the disaster was ongoing.

Graphics

• Added four new child portraits and seven new female portraits for colonists.
• Updated textures for over 30 buildings.
• Added DLC icons to save game menu that displays which DLCs are enabled in the save.
• Added a tooltip to main menu DLC buttons that displays if the DLC requires a new game to be active.
• Added a popup to save game menu that informs if activated DLCs cannot be applied to a save that is being loaded.

Balance Adjustments

• Reduced the fiber cost of Basic Clothing.
• Slightly lowered the protection value of Basic Clothing.
• Very slightly lowered the protection value of Sturdy Clothing.
• Increased fiber production in Fields.
• Changed the way that scaling works for catastrophes. The goal is to make all catastrophes scale better with game difficulty. Previously catastrophes had the same “effective phase” that affected conditions, damage and other factors.

Hello survivors! We are pleased to announce the new DLC for Surviving the Aftermath. Shattered Hope introduces the Shattered Moon calamity, giving players the ability to boost resource production and the task of maintaining survivor’s hope. Surviving the Aftermath: Shattered Hope launches on November 3rd for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC at a suggested retail price of 9.99 USD / 7.99 GBP / 9.99 EUR. During the apocalypse, the Moon was destroyed and now the consequences of that are showering down from the sky in an unforeseen disaster. By gathering resources from Moon Rock deposits and coming together as a people, the survivors must find hope to proceed and prosper. Shattered Hope focuses around increasing resource production in the colony while attempting to keep up Hope for the colonists - otherwise the new Anguish condition can cause trouble for them and the entire colony. Surviving the Aftermath: Shattered Hope Key Features include:

• Face the Moonfall and use it to your advantage with the new Building Boost mechanic The Moon is shattered in the sky and its fragments are crushing down on Earth leaving behind them devastation - but also moon rock deposits. You can refine lunar fragments and obtain lunar dust which will be used to increase the production of your buildings for a limited time. This new building boost mechanic is called overtime.
• Keep your hopes up, and feast! Hope is a new global value that decreases over time and when catastrophes happen in the game. If kept too low for too long, it will trigger a new condition called anguish that, if left untreated, may turn your colonists hostile. So, keep your hope as high as possible by holding feasts at the new colony square building.
• New production chain: take care of your colonists When colonists experience anguish, you can help them by building a trauma centre where they will heal. They will recover faster thanks to a brand new medicine called antistress. To make it, you’ll have to grow raw resources on the mushroom farm, then refine them into the actual medicine in the med hut building.

Base game

General

• Added 11 new achievements:

• Base game:

• Doomsday is canceled - Complete the Doomsday Bunker Project.
• Choo-choo! - Escape the harsh winter by fixing the train in Cold Rush.
• Finnished - Survive in the Endless Winter scenario for 100 days.
• Tailored to fit - Survive until day 100 in a custom game.
• Customized calamities - Secret!

• New Alliances DLC:

• Undercover - Complete all four covert mission types.
• Best friends forever - Ally with a society.
• Binary world view - Secret!
• Diplomatic quarter - Have four embassies built at the same time.
• Dynamic Duo - Secret!
• Federation forever - Form the federation.

• Improved build menu performance dramatically.
• Fixed an issue that prevented loading a save if a resource box was out of colony bounds and the game was saved while a carrier was moving to pick up the box.

Gameplay

• Replaced the “trade offers available” text in the society menu with “trade unavailable” when there aren't enough workers in a Trade Center.
• Double-clicking now works when overwriting a save game.
• Fixed an issue that caused some buildings to not receive resources from storages if request resources was used. This was the reason that Fuel was not always delivered properly to a Garage.
• Fixed an issue that caused up and down navigation to be inverted on a controller in request board.
• Fixed an issue that caused NPC animations to freeze in combat upon selecting a specialist.
• Fixed an issue that caused the camera to move to the wrong location when pressing the resource depleted notification.
• Added a missing text in French in the custom game pregame menu.

Graphics

• Updated portraits for caribou, boar and bear in the world map.
• Added tooltips to colonists, resources and buildings tabs in the statistics menu.
• Fixed many text overflow issues in multiple languages.
• UI polish:
  • Updated some tech icons in the tech tree.
  • Added a black filler background to the society menu for ultrawide monitors.
  • New icons for group health and animal attack in the world map UI panel.
  • Many smaller button and text changes in world map panels.
• Added fake colonists to entertainment buildings and adjusted animations in them.
• Added fake workers to Forester, Maintenance Depot and Concrete Scavenger.

New Alliances

General

• Added a tooltip to the society menu that displays information about embassy bonus buildings.
  • It should now provide an easy way to see information about different buildings when allying with a society.
• Fixed an issue that prevented loading a save caused by a roaming bandit spawning incorrectly.

Gameplay

• Rival reputation gain is now visible when failing or declining a society request and in the world map when hovering over a request location.
• Added reputation markers and player/rival reputation amounts in the society menu’s reputation bar.
• Fixed an issue that caused society convoys to move out of bounds.
• Rewards from society requests are now visible after forming the federation.
• Fixed an issue that caused the carrier count to increase visually when adding and removing workers in the Academy building.
• Roaming NPCs in the World Map now face the way they’re moving.
• Replaced generic specialist mission accomplished sounds with a voice-over for covert missions.
• Added sound to Bomb Bunker.

Graphics

• UI polish:
  • Changed the coloring and reduced the size of roaming unit’s path indicator.
  • Reduced the size of request, animal and convoy floaters in the world map.
  • Many smaller button and text changes in New Alliances related menus.
• New Alliances building polish:
  • Fixed icicle placement on Society Depot.
  • Texture changes to most New Alliances buildings.
  • Reduced the size of outposts in the world map.
  • Added a missing material in Bomb Bunker.

Balance Adjustments

• Reduced silver from scavenging locations.
• Increased New Alliance tech costs.
• Requests and reputation:
  • Patrol and Teach loan request sector triggers lowered.
  • Lowered individual request type cooldowns across the board.
  • Increased rival rep gains from failed requests (by quite some margin).
  • Decreased the cooldown to spawn new requests.
  • Increased Rival reputation gains from failed requests across the board.
  • Altered request rewards to less silver and more other resources.
  • Reduced combat and loan requests slightly, increased build requests slightly (via cooldowns).
  • Reduced timeouts on almost all requests, so there’s less time completing them (esp. loans).
• Covert Missions:
  • Player:
    • Increased damage specialists take from failed covert missions.
    • Increased covert mission duration for theft and steal research mission types.
    • Reduced archetype bonus in covert missions from 85% to 75%.
    • Reduced base covert mission success chance from 60% to 55%.
    • Increased duration a specialist spends on a loan request.
  • Hostile society & rival:
    • Increased minimum silver amount stolen in Theft.
    • Increased chances to identify the culprit, especially if the hostile mission failed.
    • Decreased rival's mission cooldowns.
• Society rewards:
  • New Alliances building repair resources updated to use higher tier resources in most cases.
  • Added pollution to Chemville's tradable goods.
  • Increased Nuclear Plant’s initial resource request amount.
• Society buildings:
  • Removed tools from greenhouse society building recipe and increased plastic required.
• Population and federation:
  • Increased minimum rival population slightly.
• Roaming units:
  • Reduced the amount of roaming animals.
  • Decreased the cooldown for spawning society convoys.

Dev Diary #23 - New Alliances DLC

Greetings survivors! “New Alliances” is here and we can finally share more details about what it means for Surviving the Aftermath. We’ve already teased its contents a bit, so let’s dig deeper into what makes it special. Society requests, alliances and federation add a fresh dimension to societies, while roaming bandits, covert missions and a new powerful Rival faction challenge you in new ways. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/b44ee899c7a1599e1e1e79866352f20e2d4e8673.png IMAGE: Keyart New Alliances adds a new, more dynamic layer to the world map and how you interact with societies. Instead of just having nice trade partners, you can now befriend and eventually ally with them with the ultimate goal of creating a federation! To do this, you must help your soon-to-be allies by completing requests and assisting them against various threats in the wasteland. But if making friends isn’t your thing, you can raid their convoys for resources or have your specialists complete covert missions inside the societies to steal loot, science points and other benefits. But note that you’re not alone in your ambitions, as a mysterious Rival faction has taken an interest in your part of the wasteland. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/6efe988a5f6d73eeebed67fcdeba0309593e556a.jpg IMAGE: Build request Forming a federation and solidifying your status as its leader will take some time. Once you’ve met the first societies, a new society depot building becomes available. It allows you to construct helpful buildings inside societies to raise their population, protect them from bandit raids or provide alternative sources of science points and silver. You can construct these buildings for a society whenever you want, even if they haven’t specifically sent a request for them. In addition to building requests, societies might also ask you to hunt bothersome animals, deal with dangerous bandit forts or loan one of your specialists to them. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/b7f6d7f252ff3da742192cc9a3c79cacc3149e0c.jpg IMAGE: Federation screen Each completed request gives you rewards and brings your two colonies closer. Once you’ve gained enough reputation, they’ll offer to ally with you and share their secrets after you’ve built their embassy in the colony. These unique, society-specific benefits range from nuclear power plant blueprints from Chemville to extra action points for every specialist from Dead Creek. Discover all the perks in the new federation status screen and choose which ones you want the most! New Alliances features eight new reward buildings and 13 permanent bonuses for your colony. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/0eed6c5b6a64918148aac10e03949b3ade377318.jpg IMAGE: Part of the rival illustration with failed request But as you encounter more societies while still dealing with all the hardships of catastrophes and bandit assaults against your own colony, you’ll be forced to decide who to help and who’s plea for aid goes unheard. Each failed request pushes them closer to your Rival, who will turn them against you! To end their influence in the wasteland, you must create a strong federation with your closest allies. To form the federation you must get the majority of the wasteland’s population on your side. Raise your allies’ population by constructing shelters and food production facilities while embarking on propaganda missions to draw people away from hostile societies. Once the majority has been achieved, you’ll be rewarded with sharing the spoils of war your Rival left behind along with other benefits. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/02eb9b95d0f0031e2c1623a2f59842fc0cfa4782.jpg IMAGE: Successful covert mission end screen Another major aspect in New Alliances involves a bit more shadier tactics. Your specialists can now embark on four different types of covert missions against other societies for various benefits. You can for example steal science points for your research via espionage with your scientists or sabotage Rival operations with scavengers to reduce their influence. Different specialist types have a higher chance to succeed on these missions, so pick your operative carefully as failure means a big drop in reputation and a potentially lethal escape from the rather offended society. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/67fc9cc29dd768a9b87eccf3958feee00368c56a.jpg IMAGE: Anti-covert mission buildings But be on your guard as these covert missions can also be used against you. Both your Rival and other societies can infiltrate your colony to steal, disrupt your research or even set off explosives! To combat this, unlock protective buildings like anti-propaganda towers and surveillance vans from the new tech branch and have them staffed at all times. The more workers you have stationed, the greater the chance you’ll prevent anything bad from happening and maybe even uncover the culprit in the process. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/61fa351e137ce92e958f26e6f8a71e48728f2fdb.jpg IMAGE: Roaming animal The world map is also more active than ever before. You might spot a herd of deer roaming around looking for food or a group of bandits searching for prey. Hostile units might chase your specialists who are moving on foot or decide to take over your world map outpost, halting its operations until you clear them out. For best protection, have a fleet of capable vehicles on hand at all times, as the bandit hordes are unable to catch a fast-moving car with all your scavenged loot inside. As the game progresses, you’ll start seeing more powerful Rival troops on the world map. Approach them with caution (and several specialists). The base game is also receiving an update with a number of quality-of-life improvements, user interface additions and bug fixes. Most notably the main quest now has mid-quest rewards, permanent effects are now visible in the Statistics screen so you can see which affect your colony, and a toggle for faster world map animations has been added to the Settings menu. Check all improvements and fixes from the Changelog: Update 4 link below. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/c642b83f615cf343a0bd5d2e3b0ed232e3e40e6a.jpg IMAGE: Colony beauty shot We hope you’ll jump in and discover all that the New Alliances DLC has to offer in terms of new buildings, tactics and decisions. There’s a lot to play around with from deciding who to help and who to hinder, and which powerful rewards to go for. So prepare yourself against bandits, rivals and sandworms alike to unite the wasteland! As we’ve mentioned before, New Alliances will be released for PC platforms first while we continue working on the console counterparts, so stay tuned! Surviving the Aftermath: New Alliances is available now on Steam and Epic Store. It is also included as a part of the Ultimate Colony Upgrade with more DLC to come later.

Changelog

General

Added Main Quest rewards.

• Gather enough Main Quest knowledge to unlock new modifiers that improve your colony, or alternatively, choose a resource reward instead.
• Each knowledge type (Life Support, Medicine, Defense and Ecosystem) gives different rewards.

Added a new Global Effects tab in the statistics menu:

• Other: displays modifiers that affect the whole colony.
• Custom game settings: displays the chosen custom game settings.

Added a setting for faster World Map animations.

• Increases the animation speed of World Map actions, such as specialist movement.
• Changed the way that other societies spawn in the World Map.
• Societies now spawn randomly to improve gameplay variation.
• Previously certain societies always spawned in the World Map, such as Lushton.

Added the New Alliances DLC banner to the Main Menu.

• The banner is visible for players that do not have the New Alliances DLC.
• The banner changes to a DLC toggle button for players that have the New Alliances DLC enabled.

Gameplay

The carrier bringing the last resource to a construction zone should now start constructing the building.

• Previously a random worker would start constructing the building.

Defeating bandit camps in the World Map now gives resource rewards based on the location.

• For example, defeating bandits in a research location will reward the player with science points.
• Defeating bandit sectors gives a currency reward.

Notifications that have many targets can now be selected multiple times to go through all the affected targets.

• Affects all notifications, such as “constructions finished” and “colonists are injured”.
• Previously, clicking on the notification moved the camera to the first affected target.

Research queue now takes the active research into account when choosing its path. This should make the research queue work much smoother.

• The top row was prioritized before. This change fixes the issue where a tech has been researched on the bottom row and it would still queue techs through the top row.

Low HP colonists will now visit Medical Tents or Field Hospitals to heal themselves.

• Colonists often had very low health that caused unintended deaths caused by hunger, malnutrition etc.
• Guards are now more effective as they will heal themselves if their health drops low enough.

Critical conditions from workers in entertainment and sanitary buildings are not instantly removed anymore.

• Building many saunas or entertainment buildings reduced the amount of conditions given to colonists in different situations.

Specialists can now be commanded to move to the exact same location as the previous specialist. This was mainly an issue on a controller. Removed camera centering when exiting specialist menu while using a controller.

• Previously, the camera moved to the player’s colony when the specialist menu was exited.

Added a notification when finding a new building in the colony view. Mainly affects the Cold Rush scenario right now. Percentage bonuses from techs now stack cumulatively. Only the latest percentage bonus was active previously.

• Main quest gives percentage rewards that affect the whole colony. This change was added so that the rewards can stack with all other percentage modifiers e.g. building durability.

Graphics

Polished the Society Menu.

• Removed unnecessary society introduction texts.
• Added “Trade offers available” text.
• Added reputation text and icon.
• Other smaller image, text and icon changes in different society menu panels.

Polished all World Map panels.

• Increased the size of World Map panels and the texts in them.
• Made the Society panel more concise.
• Improved textures for Wind Turbine, Food Storage, Tent, Emergency Shelter and Trapper.

Balance Adjustments

Added resource rewards to the early stages of the main quest.

• Rewards have been added throughout the main quest to make it more compelling to do.

Hungry colonists now seek food when hunger is at 20%, was 10% previously

• We received many comments about colonists dying from hunger, even though there was plenty of food available in the colony. This change should reduce the times random hunger deaths happen.

Tired colonists now seek shelter to sleep in when tiredness is at 20%, was 10% previously.

Bug Fixes

• Xbox only: fixed an issue that caused Wind Turbine, Lightning Rod, Lightning Tower and Martian Wind Turbine to be unrepairable when the Ultimate Colony DLC was active.
• Fixed an issue that caused the colonists to run in place and the game would reset to day 0 when loading a save where a building has just been destroyed before saving.
• Changed the wording for “wasteland biome” in multiple languages in the main quest. This caused misunderstandings in the main quest step that required an outpost to be built on the wasteland biome.

Greetings survivors old and new! We’re very excited to reveal what we’ve been doing amidst all the updates up to this point. It’s the first part of our Season Pass and will be released very soon. Here are some of its key features which gives the game’s sandbox a whole new dimension with more replayability and new challenges! Surviving the Aftermath: ”New Alliances” adds an in-depth layer to world map societies and a new, powerful rival faction as your adversary. Help your neighbours deal with new threats and gain unique rewards while uniting the wasteland under a single banner! Or use your specialists to conduct covert missions inside other societies for your own gain… Form the federation Assist societies and complete requests to gain enough reputation to ally with them. Build embassies to unlock unique permanent bonuses and buildings for your colony. Help your alliance population grow and bring the wasteland on your side by forming a federation! Rival faction A powerful opposing faction has taken an interest in your part of the world. Their control over societies grows every time you ignore or fail requests, so fight back by helping those in need or use specialists to reduce rival influence. Covert missions Your specialists can now embark on covert missions within societies to steal resources or incite its population. But beware as the same tricks can be used against you! Build new protective buildings such as Surveillance Vans and Anti-propaganda Towers to defend against these attacks. Roaming bandits and animals Bandits, society convoys and even animals are now active on the world map. Move out of their way or risk an attack. Raid convoys for loot or defeat bandits for loot and reputation. Hostile units can even take over your outposts, so be prepared to clear them out to resume production.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/6d7f576f6278d5754719af46d6a9037057260748.png

Greetings once again, survivors!

With the Lunar New Year celebrations passed, we’re back with a new and quite a hefty update. It includes the already teased new game mode “Scenarios” with two winter-themed experiences along with a ton of other improvements to logistics, statistics and so on. But wait, there’s more! In addition to this new twist on the familiar gameplay, we’re also bringing you Custom Game mode. It allows players to really tweak the experience how they want with dozens of new settings from a very laid-back experience to a pure horror show. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/af62067a70d4a0a65c38ecae710a7286ef1d60ec.png Scenarios allow you to dive into Surviving the Aftermath’s sandbox with new themes and twists on the basic formula, adding more replayability to the game. Some offer a more compact and narrative-driven experience with heavily modified rules while others throw a wrench in the works on how the long-form game plays out. This might mean a permanent weather effect or limiting the tools at your disposal, forcing you to overcome obstacles in new ways. In “Cold Rush” you start with a small colony suffering from a permanent winter storm with no other option than to find a way out. Explore and exploit your surroundings to guide the colonists away from the cold in a way previously unseen in the game. “Eternal Winter” is a more traditional sandbox experience with a never-ending winter storm along with custom rules. Can you survive in an environment where open field farming is no longer an option and the ever-present cold takes a constant toll on your colonists? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/6ea099f6c58261177afa7d672679770c406cc5ed.png You’ve requested the ability to customize your playthrough further, and here it is. The new Custom Game adds dozens of settings you can flip around to tailor the experience to your liking. Disable catastrophes, increase the number of starting specialists and remove death by old age completely for a more chill game. Remove societies, halve food nutrition and disable childbirth to really ramp up the difficulty. You can also adjust map generation even further with more soil settings, amount of terrain features, forest coverage, amount of lakes and more. On PC it’s also possible to remove the population cap completely. Since these settings can drastically change the difficulty level, achievements will be disabled in custom game mode. There’s a lot to experiment with, so give it a go! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/cc761e15e67eb168dd318f46d86a12f82928cf9b.png On the logistics front, you can now control how goods are distributed around the colony by controlling which storages request and receive various resources. These “storage requests” allow players to move and maintain specific amounts of resources between storages to create independent production areas or distribute food more evenly around the colony map. You can, for example, add a storage request for meals at the food storage next to a metal production site, so your workers don’t need to walk all the way to the colony center to eat. This, with workers living close to their job from the previous update, allows you to spread around the map more efficiently. Carriers will also divide big tasks between more people, so you should see large stacks of resources move faster - provided you have idle colonists available. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/204e27f0bd2bc7aeaad4e9d0771dc15940739435.png The map seed for your generated game world is now visible and customizable. This allows you to save interesting maps to be reused on subsequent playthroughs or shared with the community. Your current map seed is visible in the lower right corner in the pause menu. The first set of numbers refers to the various map parameters while the second set shows your pregame selections in numerical fashion. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/bd3a65f31450363cee2d9a01d12c1b402b871d61.png In other improvements, the statistics overview page has been completely overhauled. Instead of the massive spreadsheet of already known info, it has several sections with high-level info with more detailed data in the right column. All types of wind turbines are now less effective when placed next to trees to make solar panels a bit more competitive in your colony’s energy production and add a layer of planning required for your wind parks. Specialists will now move and spend their Action Points immediately at the beginning of a new day, if you’ve set a destination for them. This was done to make the multi-turn movement feature clearer when you order them to return to the colony, for example. The full list of balance changes and improvements can be found in the patch notes post, as usual. And here we are! The new game modes, logistics upgrades and other additions should provide a lot of replayability for Surviving the Aftermath, so we sincerely hope you’ll enjoy them! We’d love to hear in comments what you think of the new scenarios, and what you’d want to see next. Stay safe, survivors, and play games! Change notes - “Update #3” General

• New game modes have been added to the game.
• When starting a new game, you will now be asked to choose from either the original New Game, creating a Custom game or starting a Scenario.
• Creating a Custom game allows you to change various different settings in your game.
• The older pregame settings are still present, as are a lot of new settings such as changing the sizes of deposits, the amount of features in the colony terrain and altering the birth rate in the colony.
• Please note that some settings will not be present on all platforms due to performance limitations.
• Playing the game in a custom mode will disable the ability to unlock any achievements. They can still be unlocked normally by playing the original version of the game.
• We have also added two new Scenarios to the game.
• These scenarios will challenge your skills in surviving.
• The Cold Rush scenario will give you a challenge unlike before where you must find a way to escape the cold within the time given to you!
• The Eternal Winter scenario will not restrict the amount of time you have however as implied by the name, the colony is under constant winter! Can you survive and be able to finish the main quest?
• Note: Due to technical limitations these scenarios will not be available on the Switch. We are working on bringing them to the Switch as well in a future update if possible.
• The ability to select the Map Seed has also been added to the pregame settings for the Normal Game.
• Using a specific Map Seed will allow you to have the exact same colony, world map and pregame settings as in a previous game.
• The Map Seed can be seen in the bottom right corner when the Pause Menu is accessed in game.
• On the PC the seed can also be copied to clipboard by clicking on the button next to it.
• The Map Seed is only visible in new games started after the game has been updated.
• Once you have the Map Seed you wish to apply in your next game, you can edit this in the Summary page of the Pregame Selections when starting the new game.
• The Statistics Menu’s Overview page has been redone.
• We’ve clarified the Overview page of the menu and added in new information to be visible.
• Each section will show more detailed information when hovered over.
• Note that the information shown here will not count what happened in the save before the game was updated.
• For example Techs unlocked will only show what techs you have researched after updating and continuing with your save.
• Added an option to storage buildings that allows you to select a resource that the colonists will bring to that specific storage building.
• You can select this resource from each storage building by selecting the building first and then selecting the slot under the Request resources section.
• After selecting a resource you will be able to select the amount of that resource you want carriers to bring to this storage building.
• This change also added the option to select how many resources you wish buildings such as the Burner to hold in them.

Gameplay

• Specialists on the World Map that have queued movement will now move automatically when their APs are filled.
• Previously they would move only right before their APs would be filled again, causing confusion if they are actually using the queued movement.
• Now if there is a target set for them, the Specialists will immediately move or start action once the APs are filled.
• Wind Turbines are now affected by trees that are close by.
• All Wind Turbines will now show a radius around them when being placed and when selected in the colony.
• All trees within this area will have an effect on the efficiency of the turbine.
• Note that the efficiency of the turbine can change if trees grow or are cut down around it.
• Changed how the carriers can carry resources to construction zones.
• Previously only one colonist could carry a specific type of resource, causing construction zones to wait for resources longer.
• Now multiple carriers can bring the same resource to the construction zone which should allow construction to be faster.
• Snow on the terrain and ground is now shown immediately when saves are loaded instead of requiring the game to be unpaused first.
• Fixed an issue that would cause some sectors to block outposts from being built without any visible reason.
• Children should no longer visually all try to go to the same one school.
• The bug would cause all children to visually try and be at the same school despite being in different schools’ occupants lists.
• Now they should all go to their corresponding schools.
• Colonists should now run inside their homes if they are fleeing instead of running in front of them.
• Fixed an issue that would prevent saving the game after an error happened with broken Solar Panels.
• The game should no longer spawn any events if the Game Over screen has been shown.
• Colonists should no longer run inside resource boxes for a moment before they pick the box up.
• Added a failsafe to the game that prevents quest locations from spawning into unreachable places in the World Map.
• Fixed an issue with the indicator arrows that would cause them to point wrong when playing with specific resolutions.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the game to focus on the notifications instead of rotating the building when the corresponding button was pressed on the controller.
• The Escape button will now cancel building placement even after moving the camera with the mouse while in placement mode.
• Upgrading the campsite should no longer reset the allowed resources that were selected in the previous version of it.
• Fixed an issue that would cause a Specialist to be stuck in the colony until commanded after saving and loading the game.
• Construction zones that have been canceled will now also show a floater similarly to buildings that are being demolished.
• If colonists have nothing to do they should now idle close to their home or workplace instead of close to the Campsite.
• This should now allow your colonists to be in proximity to their workplace and be able to start work faster when they are able to.
• Fixed an issue that would cause several tutorials to show at one time or cause them to become stuck.
• The Building Health Overlay will now show the Repair floaters on top of damaged buildings.
• A limit to how many buildings and how many tiles of road can be built has been added to the game on the Switch.
• This was put in place to ensure the game can still function without issues even after progressing further in the game.

Graphics

• Added new icons for Insect and Plant seeds to the game.
• These should now be easy to differentiate from the actual resource itself, especially when trading with societies.
• Updated the Pregame selection header panel and some button icons.
• Floaters should no longer appear grainy or pale in the game.
• This issue was most visible when playing on the Switch.
• Crops growing on open fields should no longer be invisible.
• This issue was most visible when playing on the Switch.
• Building decals should now always be shown despite having low graphics settings.
• Trees should no longer flicker during catastrophes.
• This behavior was visible especially when playing on consoles.
• Updated images for a few events in the game.

Balance Adjustments

• Switch only: The speed of gathering knowledge for the main quest has been increased by 50%. This adjustment was done to compensate for the smaller World Map that is generated on the Switch due to technical limitations.
• The skills of each starting Specialists have been adjusted to ensure that they all have the best values in their respective skill based on their archetype.
• When a building is demolished, you will now gain back 75% of the construction costs.

Hello, survivors! The team here has been hard at work since our last free update in January, and we now want to share with you what’s coming next. We are working on our third free update that will add new ways to play our game and bring you some of the most requested features and improvements. We’ll share all the details once the update is closer to release (very soon) but here’s what you can expect:

• Eternal Winter Scenario: survive a permanent winter.
• Cold Rush Scenario: your colony starts in the middle of the map, in harsh winter conditions. You have to explore old abandoned structures, gather resources and find a way to escape before running out of time.
• Custom Game: new starting conditions (birth rate, terrain flatness, lakes, number of available specialists, and more).
• Map Seed Selection: now you can choose the map seed to play your favorite maps (or the community's favorite maps) again and again.
• Statistics Overview Improvement: an overhaul to the statistics overview page.
• Logistics Improvements: new ways to manually manage and prioritize resources between storages.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/4489f2f5dd6ce3b5daf95c7af1b29ff1ceda90a2.png Happy Year of the Tiger, survivors! We’re continuing our free 2022 updates with a celebration of the Lunar New Year. This includes new cosmetic buildings along with a new system, which allows you to change how your colony looks like in a flash! It’s not all tigers and fireworks, though, as we’re including quality-of-life improvements to colony combat, how people choose where they live and more. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/5fed0d5211f2507e0949cb68eb936778089bcab2.png Buildings with and without Lunar New Year pack enabled The Lunar New Year content pack includes a banner stand to display your colony flag (also available as a non-themed version), a tiger flag symbol, a red Double Lantern, a mighty Scrap Tiger statue and a cute Waving Cat statue for you to build. Regular torches and lamps are replaced with Lunar-themed versions for the duration of the event. You might also spot some of the colonists wearing festive hats. And last but not least, the Fireworks Launcher allows you to light up the sky in red and gold to kick off the celebrations! You can unlock all the new decorative buildings in two parts by completing colony milestones for prestige. We’d very much like to see how your colonies are transformed, so maybe post a screenshot here? Lunar decorations can be toggled on or off at any time from the main menu banner, or from Settings -> General. The event ends at the end of February, but you can restore the Lunar theme via the Settings menu after that date. Please note that you must enable or disable the content pack BEFORE loading a saved game or starting a new one. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/6999688bbf138f08d15ecc480b67874f695ab568.png New unit highlights in combat In addition to the more cosmetic aspects of the game, we’ve added several quality-of-life improvements for colony combat. All units that are engaged in combat have color-coded outlines, so you can spot bandits running and rat beetles scurrying around much easier. Guard and specialist hitboxes have also been enlarged to help you select and order them around better. Colonists will now flee from combat by default to save themselves and will retaliate only as a last resort. They will no longer attempt to defeat a sandworm in hand-to-hand combat. Be sure to have guards and specialists around to deal with hostiles, as you’ll be relying on them more than before. Colony alarm happiness penalty has also been drastically reduced so you can call people to safety and increase guard aggression range without a major hit to morale. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/e7a9e7805c9e24f0afd90ec73cf2bd7ccd13602b.png Isolated working area On more peaceful news, colonists will now attempt to automatically move close to their place of work if there’s capacity available, but will never kick current tenants out. When you load up a large colony for the first time, this process might take awhile. This aims to allow players to create specialized production areas further away from the main colony and speed up production. Other notable changes include storage, which now dump out all resources marked as “blocked”. Previously this only prevented bringing in new items of that type. Incorrect processing cycles in scavenge buildings such as Scrapper and Lumber Yard have been fixed, and workers will now refine the collected resources inside the building before handing them out. Since this increases the total processing times, production output quantities have been slightly increased in several buildings. And as a small but significant change, both transformers’ area of effect has been increased. Hope you’ll have an awesome Year of the Tiger. Post a screenshot of your Lunar Year themed colony on this thread to celebrate together and stay safe out there! And as a final teaser, the next update will have a new game mode to look forward to! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/025e6d6eb65af9a2d6fb3246970605deef7d7a2f.png Fireworks over the colony

Greetings, Survivors! It’s time for the next free update, which brings quite a few new things to the game. It’s the Year of the Tiger, and to celebrate it we’re giving you several cosmetic buildings, lights and even hats! We’ve improved the lives of your colony in a few intense ways, like colonists running away from a fight and guards being more effective. We’ve also included some quality of life updates for you as a player, like the return of the feedback button and that colonists will now try to move closer to where they are assigned to work which will lead to shorter commutes and improvements to the AI. General Added Lunar New Year content to the game.

• Celebrate the Year of the Tiger with colorful lanterns, impressive statues and fireworks!
• 4 new cosmetic buildings include a colony banner stand, two statues and a fireworks launcher to light up the night.
• 6 cosmetic variants to decorative lights.
• Other decorations have also been added as well as Lunar-themed hats for the colonists and lanterns to colony buildings to make the whole colony celebrate the lunar new year.
• You can unlock some of the content by completing milestones for prestige.
• Some of the content will be automatically applied when the game is loaded, such as the colonist hats and other smaller tweaks to existing buildings.
• This content will be automatically turned on when the game is updated and will be turned off at a specified time.
• The content can also be toggled on or off from the ingame settings in the Main Menu.

Colonists will now prefer housing buildings that are closer to their workplaces.

• This should allow your colonists to spend more time working instead of running around the colony to go to sleep in their homes.
• After you load your previous save, the colonists will start looking for free houses closer to their workplace, which can cause a chain reaction as they all start moving around, but this should cool down after a moment.

Improvements and fixes to the colony combat.

• Colonists will now always flee from combat instead of fighting. Only Guards and Specialists will fight attacking hostiles.
• The penalty from the Alarm mode has been significantly decreased.
• Added a highlight to units in combat in the colony.
• If a Colonist or Specialist has a target to attack, this highlight will be shown.
• Enemies with a target to attack will also show this highlight.
• Guard and Specialists should also now be easier to select in the colony.
• Colonists working as Guards at the Gate should now be constantly working at the gate instead of working as carriers around the colony.
• They should also now change to the Guard clothing just like the Guards at the Guard Post.
• Fixed an issue that would cause Guards to be less effective in combat after saving and loading.
• Previously any colonist that had been assigned to work as a guard would have the same values as a regular colonist after saving and loading.
• Now the values are saved and loaded correctly.
• Hostile animals should no longer attack open fields or Water Wells when they attack the colony.
• Increased the damage the Guards and the level 1 weapons do to enemies.

Gameplay PC Only: Added back the possibility to write feedback of the game to the developers.

In the Pause Menu, there is now a button Write Feedback. This can be used to write feedback straight to the developers regarding the game.

If you encounter any game breaking bugs, please use this to immediately report the issue so that the issue can be investigated as soon as possible. When a resource is now disallowed from a specific storage building, the building will eject all units of that resource onto the ground.

• They will be spawned next to the building as a resource box the colonists can then carry to other storage buildings that allow the resource.

The resource order shown in Allowed Resources for the Campsite, Warehouse and the General Storage has been changed.

• Resources should now be in a more consistent order.

The Colonists working at the Gate will remain working there even after upgrading the Gate.

• Previously the extra work slots were closed after upgrading.

Fixed an issue with the Industrialist ideology that would cause two techs to overlap each other.

• This issue caused the Conveyor Belts tech to overlap with the Rare Metals tech.

Changed the way how tooltips for resource deposits and work areas are shown in the colony.

• The game should no longer attempt to show them if you are for example only moving past a resource deposit.
• This should improve the performance of moving around the colony.

Also changed the way how panels are shown in the World Map.

• The panel should only become visible if you stop at a location or sector.
• This should improve performance when moving around the World Map.

Fixed an issue that would cause the game to become stuck if events were closed too quickly. Fixed an issue that would cause the Work Area tooltip to change resources to different ones after hovering over the same resources for a while. Fixed an issue that would cause small decorations to switch their location if they were rotated when placing.

• This should make placing decorations such as the Small Bush a lot easier.

Fixed an issue that would cause the Trade button to move in the Society window based on the length of the description of the other society.

• The button should now remain still.

The work area resource tooltip should no longer overlap with the repair mode tooltip. The Specialist Menu tooltip now shows the prompts on how to select and focus the camera on the specialist. Fixed an issue that would cause the extra panels shown for specific buildings (such as the recipe selection panel) to not close when the cross icon at the top right corner was pressed. Fixed an issue that would cause the achievement “Look, No Hands” to not complete if the Metal Extractor had been upgraded to the Magnetic Separator. Fixed an issue that would cause green highlights to remain visible constantly for multiple buildings around the colony. Changed the way how buildings which require colonists to gather resources work.

• Previously the colonists would only drop some resources to the building and not actually work at the building at all.
• Now the colonists will work at the building as well, though their work cycle is a lot shorter than other buildings.
• This change affects buildings such as the Scrapper and the Recycler.
• These buildings will now produce slightly more resources due to the work taking a bit more time.

The colonists will now take resources inside production buildings instead of dropping them off at the corner of the building. Fixed the description of the Motorization tech.

• Previously it would mention that it unlocks the Oil Refinery as well.

Fixed an issue that would cause a combat event at the gate to result in combat instead of avoiding it despite the text indicating that you have avoided combat. Graphics Updated some of the icons of the Build Menu categories. Tweaked the visual look and animations of the following buildings:

• The Insect Farm.
• The Sawmill.
• The Logging Camp.
• The Lumber Yard.

Widened the panel shown when a trade needs to be confirmed.

• This should now allow texts and resources to fit better.

Added a resource box for Medicinal Herb.

• Previously the colonists would be carrying an invisible box to the storage when Medicinal Herb was being produced.

Fixed an issue with the icicles shown on the Botanical Garden. Balance Adjustments Updated the resources the society Coalition offers to be more consistent. Slightly increased the work area of the Radiator and its upgrade. Increased the work area of the Transformer and its upgrade.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/711265f3dfcce7d3fa6ae973e010c7ada808b64c.png

Happy wintery greetings, survivors

We’re back at work in snowy Finland and ramping up development for a fresh new year! The first of the free updates in 2022 includes a dedicated repair and demolish button to make those tasks faster without a need to select each building individually. Victories in gate combat are now rewarded with loot left behind by the defeated bandits. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/65d992e77c8e7d37baebb2cb22879557e9f5a0ff.png Something that has been requested a lot is restoring rare metal production to the colony via a new late-game tech. It allows you to upgrade the Metal Auto-Extractor into a Magnetic Separator with production options for regular or rare metal production. We’ve also updated over a dozen building models to be more distinctive and easier to recognize in your colony. A new “Very Hard” difficulty option has been added for those looking to really challenge themselves. It starts you in a very barren climate with limited resources, reduced water and energy production outputs and also increases the amount and severity of catastrophes. Balancing the game’s overall difficulty continues in the meanwhile and we’ll share more news on that later on. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/18c76601e5e24da2eaf816b2f2ccec15c8368675.png Smaller features and updates include balance fixes such as more aggressive guard and specialist AI with better target prioritization especially during an alarm, limitations to fishing building placement, removal of bandits that attack you from behind and so on. Once the alarm is enabled, guards and specialists search for hostile targets in a much wider area than before and engage them more aggressively. Along with lots of bugs we’ve also fixed the Twitch integration, so you’ll be able to vote on event and quest results, and which catastrophe your favorite streamer will face next! Check the detailed bug fix list in the patch notes. Notable balance changes include reduced silver gains from selling weapons, faster but more resource-consuming meal production and increased metal/concrete deposits around the colony. We'll be revealing more about the future updates later on, but they include a new, customizable game mode and scenarios for more replayability with all-new challenges. And as always, updates will have more new content, bug fixes, balancing and QoL improvements. And that is it! We’ll be releasing more free updates and DLC throughout the year and are excited to share all about them as soon as possible! In the meanwhile, stay safe and play some games! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/13a552a2050c8c93ef4d4b7d7af9ae2a12d1a4c3.png

Changelog - “Free Update 1” - 4th of January 022

Version number

Steam / Epic / Paradox Plaza: 1.21.3.1473

General

• Added Demolish and Repair modes to the game.
  • These modes allow you to set buildings to be Demolished or Repaired faster.
  • With a keyboard and mouse these can be accessed by selecting the button from the bottom left corner and then selecting each building you wish to either Demolish or Repair.
  • With a controller these can be accessed by pressing the button that controls the camera and then pressing the respective buttons visible on the screen.
  • The modes are exited the same way as you would cancel placing a building.
• Gate Combat now gives you rewards if you win the combat.
  • Resources will be given both from winning the actual Gate Combat and from winning the combat if the bandits breach the Gate.
• Added a new tech to all ideologies to the game that allows you to upgrade your Metal Auto-Extractor to a Magnetic Separator.
  • This building is used to produce Rare Metals from underground metal deposits around the colony.
  • After upgrading to the Magnetic Separator you can choose from the building’s info panel which resources you want it to produce, Rare Metals and Metal or Metal and Junk.
• New difficulty setting has been added to the game.
  • You can now choose Very Hard settings in the pregame selections.
  • These selections include:
    • More difficult catastrophes that occur more frequently.
    • A dryer colony with smaller and fewer deposits around it.
    • Limited starting resources and colonists.
    • Limited water and energy production values.
• The Twitch integration has been worked on and it should now be working without issues.
  • Enabling this will allow the viewers in your chat to vote which option they would choose in an event or a quest but you as the player can still make the choice.
  • Your viewers can also vote on which catastrophe will be occurring next - you as the player cannot change the outcome of the vote but instead will have to experience the catastrophe chosen by the voters.

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue with the notification for the Main Quest storyline that caused it to show misleading information.
  • Previously this notification would tell you to go to the Bunker’s construction zone despite the quest being in a state where you should wait until you have gathered more knowledge.
  • The notification should now show the current task correctly.
• The colonists working as Guards and the Specialists should now prioritize targets for combat better.
  • This change should now make them automatically change target during combat if for example there are new targets closer to them or if they are moving towards the target and the target moves.
  • The Guards and Specialists will still follow the command given by the player with the highest priority.
• Guards and Specialists will now also react to hostiles from a greater distance.
• Fishing buildings can no longer be placed too close to each other.
  • This change affects the Fishing Pier, Fishing Hut and the Aqua Farm.
  • These buildings will now need to be placed further away from each other.
  • The area that prevents placement of another fishing building is shown when the building is placed.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Epic exclusive flag to not show in the Epic version of the game.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Main Quest to become stuck if a side quest was also active at the same time with certain steps.
  • This fix will sadly not repair previous saves with this issue but it will prevent the same issue from occurring again.
• Added a button to the building info panel that allows you to duplicate the building.
• New hotkeys have been added to the game to be used when a building or a construction zone is selected.
  • The following buttons have been added with the default hotkeys shown here:
    • Pause the building or construction zone - P
    • Repair the building - Comma
    • Upgrade the building - Period
    • Duplicate the building - V
    • Destroy the building or cancel the construction zone - Del
• Specialists should now start scouting and combat with bandits in a blocked sector with queued movement.
  • Previously they would stop at the edge of the sector and they would have to be commanded to do the action again.
• The Main quest will no longer advance if the player builds a regular outpost to the desert biome.
  • The game now checks that the outpost is an Engineer outpost before allowing the quest to advance.
• Colonists will now take resources into the buildings that produce resources instead of dropping them off to the corner of the building.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the game saves to be broken in certain situations.
  • This issue was caused by a conflict with the building references so this issue would only happen in very specific situations..
• The Help Menu will now show the header and the button prompts in the correct language instead of English.
• Fixed an issue in the game that caused colonists to remain stuck due to trying to find a new path and failing.
• The Transport Outpost no longer shows the status of a convoy if nothing is being transported.
• Housing buildings will now show the work areas for buildings that generate heat.
  • This should help with placing housing buildings in areas that are already heated.
• Colonists should no longer get the “slept on the ground” happiness penalty when they are sleeping in Crowded Tents or Crowded Emergency Shelters.
• Changed an attack from the bandits into an attack by rats that occurred in the colony.
  • Previously it would be bandits that attacked from the woods behind your colony.
  • Now the attackers will be rats instead.
  • You should no longer experience any bandit attacks from the woods, only from the gate.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Heavy Tarps tech to show the Improved Tenement as a building the tech affects.
  • This should have shown the Crowded Tent instead.
• Fixed an issue that caused the game to center to the old position of the Campsite or its upgrades if the building was demolished and built again somewhere else.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Specialist to slide instead of running to their queued task on the World Map.
• The Energy overlay is now shown when the Lightning Rod or Tower is being placed.
• Fixed issues with the New Eden and the Bread and Circuses achievements that prevented them from being unlocked normally.
• The panel for Bandits on the World Map now shows the correct health for individual bandits and group health.
  • The amounts were previously in the wrong positions.
• The Survival Skills tech now also affects the Fishing Pier and the Fishing Hut.
• The floater on top of animal carcasses should now be positioned on top of the carcass.

Graphics

• Several buildings have been reworked and now look different than before.
  • The following buildings have been reworked: Mechanic Shop, Tailor and its upgrade Grand Tailor, General Storage, Forester, Maintenance Depot, Mill, Outhouse and its upgrade Toilet, Recycler and its upgrade Advanced Recycler, Cemetery, Trapper and its upgrade Hunting Cabin.
• Icons used to indicate conditions of a colonist have been updated.
• Fixed an issue that caused the World Map roads to not be visible.
• The colonist info shown in the Statistics has been updated to look visually similar to the colonist info panel shown when a colonist is selected in the colony.
• Updated the building thumbnails in the Build Menu to visually match their 3D models.
• Adjusted the visual look of the Fertility Overlay.
• The Carrot, Soy and Wheat crop textures no longer have white borders around their leaves.

Balance Adjustments

• The amount of deposits in the colony have been balanced.
  • There are now similar amounts of individual deposits in each difficulty option.
  • The difference between difficulties is now more visible in the amount of resources in each deposit.
• The amounts of Rubble in Concrete deposits and Debris in Metal deposits have been increased.
• The Cookhouse and the Mess Hall now use more resources to create meals but they produce the meals faster.
• Soybeans now take more time to grow in the fields.
• Decreased the amount of Peanuts harvested from fully grown fields slightly.
• The Large Solar Panel now produces more energy.
• The Water Well’s work area has been enlarged.
• Changed the resources needed to build Happiness buildings.
  • More advanced Happiness buildings now also cost more resources but they also produce more happiness to the colony.
• The amounts of Prestige points needed to unlock different decorations have also been increased.
• All three levels of Weapons are now worth less Silver when being traded.
• The size of the Work Area of the Maintenance Depot can now be enlarged even more than before.
• The cost of the level 1 tool in the Grand Toolshop now matches the cost in the regular Toolshop.
• The rate at which societies now update their offerings has been slowed down.
• Societies will also now offer slightly less currency for all resources.
• Most food resources are also now worth less Silver when being traded to other societies.
• The animal carcasses can now be harvested for less meat.
  • This affects all wild animals in the colony.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/f62a02577be312c7cb81cd4b67c87caa89254213.png Before our team heads to a holiday break we wanted to thank you, our fantastic community, for all the support you have given us during the past year! We also take the chance and recap some of the highlights from the year 2021 and in the end also take a peek into the future of what is coming in 2022.

Recap

In 2021 we had eight major updates and many smaller ones in between. The update pace was a little less frequent as before, but it helped to produce more meaningful content to each update

• Reworked colony map generation to cluster deposits more together and distribute different soil types in a more balanced way around the colony. This helps to give more clear directions where to expand from the starting area.
• The new outposts system and diversity of different outposts were added to make the world map part of the production chain and resource logistics.
• Colony alarm enables players to choose how the population reacts to enemies attacking the colony, whether they be wild beasts or bandits broken through the gate. This feature is still work-in-progress and we want to make it a more useful tool in case of all types of emergencies.
• World Map combat makeover for clearer and better communicated fights. This allowed you to make informed decisions on where to attack and how many specialists you might need.
• A new hiring feature was added to allow players to recruit new specialists, since the outpost system created quite a large sink to “spend” them. Specialist hiring is being expanded on in future updates to add more options for the players.
• Tiered resource system for stronger progression from wood and plastic to concrete and advanced components, supported by better visuals. The more you progress, the more advanced resources you need. As a reward, your colonists fair better, you can support a larger population and the visual identity changes from tents to permanent housing.
• Colonist AI and task system has been improved to avoid irrational behavior and logistical bottlenecks in the production chains.
• Population cap has been increasing during the year multiple times.
• A lot of new buildings were added during the year to add diversity and depth to various features.
• We’ve also done QoL improvements and UI/UX work to every part of the game, but that is definitely something we are still focusing on the future as well.

The latest major release was obviously the 1.0 update, which upgraded the game in significant ways:

• Endgame content with a long main quest driving the gameplay toward the ultimate goal.
• New endgame related buildings and outposts to build.
• Brought back the improved version of the gate combat.
• Reworked malnutrition system.
• Voice-overs to bring life to events, quests and your population.
• Crispier visuals for buildings to identify them better in all conditions, lighting changes and polished effects for the final “look” of the game.

These were only a few examples of what happened during the last year, but since the release we have been working on the upcoming updates as well. Unfortunately the update we intended to come out in December did not make it before the holidays, but we will be releasing that early January. Currently our plan is to have three updates before March.

Next steps

If nothing changes, the first update includes dedicated repair and demolish buttons to make repairing and demolishing buildings easy and fast without a need to select each building individually. Victory in gate combat is rewarded with loot left behind by the defeated bandits. And something that has been requested a lot is a new tech that enables the production of Rare Metal in the colony once more by upgrading the Metal Auto-Extractor into a Magnetic Separator. One more thing that we’ve been experimenting with is a new “Very Hard” difficulty option has been added for those looking to really challenge themselves. Other smaller things include balance fixes such as more aggressive guard and specialist AI with better target prioritization especially during an alarm, limitations to fishing building placement, removal of bandits that attack you from behind and so on. But we’ll come back to these in more detail as the update is released! We’re not ready to reveal all details of what will come in the later updates, but as a teaser we are planning to add new game modes that allow customizing the start settings with more freedom and make scenarios that make the game playable and challenging in completely new ways. Also each update will have new content, fixes and QoL improvements. But let’s come back to these early next year!

Happy Holidays!

Now we head out to have a short break and return back in January to make the game we love as good as possible. Thank you for the past year and we wish everyone of you happy holidays! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/4e8f5d75c37f7e383b25dc150d755511017862f8.png

And there it happened, Surviving the Aftermath is officially out of Early Access and has now entered 1.0 status. It's out now on PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. To everyone who has played the game and shared your valuable feedback with us up until this point: thank you so very much. We're proud of what we've accomplished together with you with Surviving the Aftermath, and we look forward to seeing you take your first steps in the finished product. Now, below you can watch the Release Trailer. Enjoy!

Game version 1.21.2.1256 General Added a new Main quest storyline.

• The quest will trigger at a certain point in the game.
• As this is a new main quest, it will not block other side quests from appearing as before.
• The main quest will guide you through a story of survival.
• If you complete the main quest, you will be able to either quit the game or keep playing with only Winter being a catastrophe that will occur in your colony.

Gate Combat has been reintroduced to the game.

• While the combat at the gate still works similarly to how it was before, we have improved the UI to make it more clear.
• The end result of the gate combat now depends a lot more on the level of the gate, the health of the gate at the start of the combat, and the amount of guards working at the gate. This means that it is more important to upgrade the gate and keep it manned to ensure bandits can't get in - at least as easily.
• Bandit groups arriving at your gate will become more difficult over time as well.
• If the gate will be breached, the bandits attacking your colony will all spawn at the gate instead of around the colony as before.
• Your guards working at the gate can also get injured now during the gate combat.

Added voiceovers to the game.

• The voiceovers have been added to different notifications, game phases, quests, and events.

Added a new intro and entry videos and a new Main Menu background to the game. Gameplay The Malnutrition system has been reworked.

• Previously the system would work with one threshold which could cause a colonist to continually suffer from malnutrition, then be healed quickly but suffers from it again soon after being healed.
• The system now works in a different way which ensures that colonists should not get the condition again quickly after being healed from it.
• Due to this change, a colonist suffering from Malnutrition will also lose health due to the condition and can eventually die from it.

A complete rework of the Help menu.

• The Help Menu now has a new look and the entries in it have been divided into different categories.
• The categories should help with finding the correct entry quicker.

The Food Storage building also now has an “Allowed Resources” option.

• You can select separate food resources to be blocked from the storage or even based on the type of food. This means you can prevent all meals for example from being stored in a specific Food Storage.

Reworked how colonists working in buildings that produce resources from other resources work if there are more than one colonist working.

• Previously only one colonist would carry the resources to the building and other colonists would idle and wait.
• Now all colonists working in the building can carry the resources if more than one resource is needed. For example, a Cookhouse with two workers will now work more smoothly as one worker will fetch the food and one will fetch the firewood required.

The Pregame selection screens have been reworked.

• This includes a new visual look as well as a prologue text giving you some background to what happened in the past.
• The selections now represent better how the choices you make will impact your gameplay.
• Small changes to available specialists to select from as well.

Added the ability to move around the colony while the Overlay Menu is open.

• Previously this was not possible, instead, the camera would remain still until the menu was closed.

More changes

• Fixes to the memory usage of the game, especially if starting a new game several times in a row.
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to show the text All Clear when attempting to place a building outside the colony grid.
• The colonists working at the Burial Pit or the Cemetery now work better together. Previously all colonists working in the building would try to carry the same dead colonist. Now only one worker should get the task to carry a specific corpse.
• Specialists should no longer get stuck outside the colony gate.
• Wind turbines will now require to be heated during the Winter catastrophe.
• Fixed a visual issue with the output of the Scavenger Outposts. Previously it would always show at least 1 unit in 12 hours even though it was only producing 1 unit every 24 hours.
• Fixed an issue that would prevent the Happiness tooltip from showing properly on certain resolutions and aspect ratios.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Survivor Outpost UI to show misleading information. Previously these numbers were rounded up, so the UI would show a higher frequency than what the actual frequency was.
• Added new tutorials to the game. A tutorial for creating outposts was added as well as tutorials for the new features implemented in this patch.
• Fixed an issue that would cause survivors from Survivor Outpost in the World Map to turn into elders when they entered the colony.
• Added new heightmaps to the game with different terrains for the colony.
• The game will now show pointers on the World Map to better indicate where a quest location is.
• The fields will no longer simply show Paused as their status if the work slot is closed. Previously it would show as Paused in this situation despite the crops still growing.
• The condition system for colonists has been reworked to improve the performance of the game.
• An event occurring in the colony should no longer block saving unless the event has been started.
• Fixed an issue that would cause an event to show up with just the IDs showing.
• The floater on top of guards will now be shown constantly as a faded floater if the colonist does not have any other floaters to show.
• The day count in the colony will no longer increase until the first colonists have been invited.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the colonists to not face the building they were repairing.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the game to give you Wood instead of Metal when the Metal option was chosen.
• Improved scrolling with a controller in locations where there is text only visible.
• Catastrophes are now occurring in other sectors around the World Map. - These can be seen clearly from their visual effects on the sector.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the trade menu to show wrong amounts of resources available if the player would cancel trading the resource.
• Added a new name and description for Gate Level 3.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Specialists to return back to the World Map immediately after they have been sent to the colony.
• Added a separate slider for the Voice Overs.
• The underground deposits will now show their richness as a percentage instead of Low/Medium/High. - The percentage will also be visible already in the tooltip shown when the deposit is hovered over. - The info panel shown when a building is being placed will also now show the efficiency, making it easier to determine which deposit to utilize. - The richness values were also balanced to prevent deposits with very low efficiency from appearing.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Extractors and the Auto-Extractors to calculate their efficiency wrong. This was caused by other deposits of the same type being too close to the building.
• Added a warning to the Society panels if the Trade Center has not been built yet.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the colonists to sometimes lose their tools suddenly or cause the tools to remain in the air where the colonist had previously been working. The tools should now visually appear when they are being used and not stay in the air.
• The Water Pump building can now be used during the Heat Wave catastrophe.
• The Wandering Merchant will no longer offer Cricket Eggs as these are always available to be planted in the Insect Farm.
• The game will now spawn resources gained from events to the Campsite if the Gate has not been built. Previously they would be spawned to the middle of the entire colony.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the “Low on …” notification to appear if the player only had higher-level items available.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Storm Dome construction zone to not be selectable after being placed in the colony.
• Fixed an issue that would allow certain decorations to be placed on barren soil despite their descriptions.
• Fixed an issue that would cause a wrong amount to be shown in the Harvestable Crops part of the Food tooltip. This amount was updated with a delay, so this could often show a much larger amount than was actually available.
• The Radiator and the Industrial Radiator now show their heat radius always when selected and when being placed in the colony.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Healing Outpost to not start healing if the Specialist arrived at the Outpost with queued movement or by exiting from a car.
• The “Specialists ready for action” notification should no longer be shown every time when the game is loaded. The notification will still be shown if there are Specialists with Action Points available that are not currently performing a task such as scavenging.

Graphics

• The Society and Trade windows have had an update to their layout. They will now show the resources a society offers and what resources will be exchanged in the trade more clearly.
• The overlay shown when placing a building that requires energy or water to function has been improved. There are now connecting lines shown which will tell you if the building is within reach of the relevant building's work area.
• The buildings’ work area display has been improved. - This affects buildings such as the Burners, which previously would show all their work areas on top of each other. - The work areas are now instead merged together to make it easier to see which places are heated and which are not.
• Fixed missing textures on some buildings.
• Added new building 3D models to the game. Added a new model to the Tenement, Shanty, House, and Two Story House buildings.
• New look for the Tech Tree. - The Tech Tree icons are now much larger and easier to read. - The legend for the Tech Tree has been moved so that you will need to open it from a button.
• New images were added around the game to events and pregame.
• The Outpost panel on the World Map has been polished.
• The Create a Settler panel has also been polished.
• Visual updates to several info panels in the game. These include the info panels for colonists, specialists, and buildings.
• The Medicine Icon in the top bar has been updated.
• Updated the visual look of the different sections of the Main Menu and the Pause Menu.
• The 3D models of the Fields and Irrigated Fields have been tweaked so that they are not as flat.
• Event illustrations have been updated.
• The Guard Floater has been made smaller and blue. It should now also be positioned a lot better on top of the Guard.
• Fixed an issue with Lumber Yard’s animation.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Large Solar Panel to remain open at nighttime.
• Updated the Tutorial images for most of the tutorials in the game.

Balance

• Improved the balance of starting resources in the game.
• Colonists will now lose health at a slower rate than before if they are hungry. This health loss can cause colonists to die from hunger despite having a lot of food available in the colony. The slower rate should give colonists a better chance to reach the food in time.
• Reduced the rate of mutation during the Fallout catastrophe.
• Adjusted the Merchant events to only have 3 offers available instead of the previous 4.
• The Lightning Rod and Lightning Tower buildings now require less resources to be repaired and can withstand a lot more damage.
• The time colonists consider leaving the colony has been slightly increased. This should give you a better chance of changing their minds and making them stay in your colony.
• Changed the max HP of Specialist Cait to match the HP value of other Scientist Specialists.
• The Metal deposits around the colony now have more metal in them.
• The Advanced Scrapper and the Metal Extractor now produce more Metal each cycle.
• The Shanty and its upgrade now require Plastic to be repaired.
• The Lumber Yard and the Sawmill now produce more wood each cycle.
• Tools now require less Metal to be produced.
• The Level 3 version of the Gate now requires Concrete as its repair material instead of Metal.
• The type and amount of resources required to repair different housing buildings have been adjusted.
• The Space Junk disaster should now occur less frequently in the game.
• The Concrete deposits around the colony contain more Rubble to be gathered by the Concrete Scavenger.
• Specialists will now cost various amounts of Silver, based on their total skill points. Specialists will no longer accept Food as payment to be hired to your colony.
• The Extractors now work slightly faster.

Greetings, Survivors! It’s been quite the journey from the very beginning of the early access period to today. We announced Surviving the Aftermath at PDXCON ‘19 main stage and while it had the core already in place, the game has evolved quite a bit over two years, 20 major updates and smaller patches in-between in early access. The regular updates have added more content, features, and fixes according to our vision and your invaluable feedback. Make no mistake, we wouldn’t be here without you so again, thank you on behalf of the entire Iceflake team. There have been ups and downs along the way, but we’re happy with the end result and hope you are too! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/391bce162aa753b6bda29e65ae24a554cc743a0f.jpg While update 1.0 has a ton of new features, reworks, improvements, and fixes, the end-game is definitely the most important one. It uncovers some of the mysteries behind the apocalypse and how the world ended the way you see it now. While the sandbox nature of the game remains unchanged, you’re now able to embark on a long quest to ultimately rid your colony of some of its most destructive challenges. This will require you to visit distant locations on the world map to uncover old world knowledge while fighting and building up your colony to take advantage of your resources to build a massive protective bunker for your colonists. Building materials alone won’t be enough, though, and you’re tasked to build new types of engineering outposts around the map to amass the necessary know-how and resources to complete this monumental project. Different types of outposts gather one of four required types of knowledge, and exploring the world map ensures you can find the optimal sectors for each. It’s a tough task meant to last the bulk of your playthrough made even tougher by the unknown hostile force on your heels. But the reward will definitely be worth it, raising your colony to a whole new level of survival! The game doesn’t end after completing this massive undertaking and you’re free to continue playing for as long as you like. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/7437a0c21302ccffe50cca91df400826cb7b8d33.png As per community request, we’ve restored the gate combat in a new and improved form. The initial feature was not what you or we were happy with, so we took a step back and reworked how it functions and how it’s communicated to the player - with your help. Enemies will once again come knocking at your gate to blackmail the colony or just see it burn. If you don’t give in to their demands, gate combat will take place. The new UI allows you to see how well your gate is defended, how numerous your opponents are, and when you can affect its outcome. Your top priority before that is to have a fully repaired gate with all hands on deck, and even then it might always be enough. Upgrading the gate provides your growing colony with better protection and more guards, so don’t neglect it! Increasingly bigger and badder bandit groups won’t be held back otherwise. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/96ce93052e3e6e10f31ce2f919211bafcdf01ce0.jpg The aftermath now also speaks! Voice-overs from professional voice actors have been added for numerous sections of the game, including notifications, milestones, events, and quests. We’ve also updated the specialist responses and grunts. The voice-overs bring quite a bit more flavor to your questing and also help draw attention to important happenings around the colony and the world map. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/e56f32cba75493791cbad184fe5fb3a25c14a206.jpg Almost all aspects of the game have received balance updates and polish, but two major elements have been reworked a bit more thoroughly. Malnutrition will not flip back and forth anymore if a colonist is right on the threshold. We’ve also added a small health penalty to those suffering from malnutrition, so be sure to react to it as quickly as possible. A balanced diet is a must! Production buildings with multiple workers have also gotten reworked. As a result, they divide their carry tasks more efficiently and the “extra” workers spend less time standing idle when one of them is bringing in resources. This will increase productivity considerably, so some balancing has been done to counter inflating the economy. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/84454b655affdd70290f068adcef2c4fffa327a0.jpg The user interface has received numerous user experience improvements, tweaks, and changes. Society and trade windows have been updated to show earlier what is on offer. The overlays for energy and water have been improved to clearly show the connections between energy or water consumers and producers with a nice visual grid of underground pipelines. The heat overlay has been cleaned up to look nicer and more informative when burner zones overlap each other, so it’s easier to see which areas are heated. The tech tree has received a facelift for a clearer look which should be a lot more readable especially on consoles. Other UI elements have been polished for a more refined final look. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/a93f96840de8ef6d3965f313e69b278a6e6a4f9b.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/187e464000821f476cf0c67276c47ce966135ffb.jpg Along with the voice-overs, we’ve added a cool new intro to the game! It should set the mood nicely for the pregame, in which we’ve added a short prologue story about the condition of the world. Other smaller improvements include a categorized help menu and impressive new building models for shanties, tenements, houses, and two-story houses. As you upgrade your shelters from one tier to another, you can really see your colony improve right in front of your eyes. The lighting, textures, and atmospheric effects have also been polished to give the game a crispier look with more definition between the buildings and the environment, as shown by the picture below. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/7cd1167a562928a25218551493ba6f9a2b48e75f.jpg And here we are! Two years and many, many updates later the game is finally in its 1.0 form. We don’t have long to celebrate, though, as work with the first post-release updates and upcoming DLCs are already in progress. Once again, thank you for supporting us over all these months, and hope to see you enjoying the 1.0 release along with future content! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/d65dc3d2a00b4ebc675582c6a056f8ab6d8a601a.jpg Be safe, Survivors, and play games!

The End is really here! In the last episode of the series, PartyElite will show what ultimate challenges are waiting for you in the Aftermath. We're taking a look at some new features coming in 1.0 as well!

Life in the Aftermath is full of unique stories just waiting to be discovered. In today's tutorial, PartyElite will take a closer look at quests which offer you a chance to send your specialists on interesting and sometimes dangerous paths. Your choices will decide if they turn out to be worthwhile adventures.

The World Map offers quests, bandits, resources, opportunities, and threats! Use Specialists to explore the world around your colony and try to survive all the hazards of this post-apocalyptic world. PartyElite will give you a basic overview of all the things to watch out for!

Specialists are key members of your colony that are able to explore the world around you. PartyElite shows off all the actions and benefits that come from specialists. Be sure to pick the right ones for your colonies needs!

It's been a long road, but Surviving the Aftermath is finally ready to leave its Early Access infancy and evolve into its glorious 1.0 form on PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. In celebration of this joyous occasion we teamed up with Youtuber PartyElite to bring you a series of guide videos. The first one, which is all about Colony Management, is ready for your viewing pleasure today. And hey, a lot has happened since we started our Early Access period, so don't assume it won't have anything to teach you even if you've played Surviving the Aftermath before!

We are extremely excited to announce that the long-awaited Update 1.0 for Surviving the Aftermath will be released on November 16th, 2021! That date will mark the official end of the early access period. To all our players, who shared this amazing journey with us, and all new Survivors who will embark on their adventure in the Aftermath soon - we hope you’ll enjoy what the dangerous post-apocalyptic future has to offer.

FOUNDER’S PACK EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

If you’re one of our veteran players, you’re probably already enjoying the content of the Founder’s Pack in your game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/a6c619b5f90fe1e972465d52456cd1894577bded.jpg However, with the 1.0 Update release, its content will become exclusive to the early access period and Day 1 Editions. To secure the Founder’s Pack for yourself, remember to grab your copy of Surviving the Aftermath before November 16th, or pre-order/buy a physical copy of the Day 1 Edition while the supply lasts. But that’s not all! On November 16th the Founder’s Pack will receive one more exclusive piece of content. We’re adding a brand new Outback Radio to it! It doesn’t matter if you already own the Founder’s Pack or plan to buy it before the 1.0 Update launches, the radio station will become available to you on November 16th for free! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/d6626a75fa9b5d56f2a7f2915f8e5b9f6d4bcdd2.png

AND MORE TO COME!

We still have a few exciting announcements up our sleeve before the 1.0 Update launches on November 16th. Follow us on social media to stay up to date with the latest Surviving the Aftermath news. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SurvivingPDX/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/Surviving_PDX Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/surviving_pdx/ PDX Discord - https://discord.gg/pdx

Game version

PC: 1.17.1.3683 Xbox: 1.17.1.181

Gameplay

• You should no longer be offered a Specialist you already have in your colony.
• The Specialist menu will now be hidden when the Build Menu is opened. This will prevent the two menus from overlapping on smaller screens.
• Sandworms should change their target if their original target runs out of range.
• The Top Bar now shows Firewood again as its own resource.
• Fixed an issue in the background systems of the game that could cause the game to appear stuck on devices with lower performance. This will also improve the game’s performance on the Xbox.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the game to show a notification about an event but would prevent the floater from showing or the 3D objects from appearing. While there is still a small intended delay until the 3D objects and floater appear, they should now always be shown.
• The Entertainment category should now be shown immediately after load. Previously it would require the player to open the Build Menu twice for it to show.
• The Trade panel will now show the resource descriptions again when you hover the cursor at a resource.
• Changed how the tech Upscaled Tents shows its effect. Previously this would show a +0 happiness boost which was not a clear indication of the effect of the tech.
• Fixed various issues that would cause errors to occur in the background of the game. These errors could cause the colonists to become stuck suddenly.
• Added translations for the Outposts help menu entry.
• Colonists should no longer get the “Slept on the ground” happiness debuff if they are living in a Crowded Tent.
• Added a failsafe for corrupted saves. Unfortunately, this will not prevent resources or the Tech Tree from resetting back to zero due to an error but it will allow you to continue the previously unplayable corrupted saves.
• The sector info panels in the World Map should now show correctly the Buildable/Blocked and Accessible/Inaccessible details.
• The Create a Settler panel now shows a highlight around the selected Specialist to better indicate which Specialist will turn into a Settler.

Graphics

• The event pop-up texts have had layout improvements.
• The colonist info panel has been adjusted to add space for names of workplaces and shelters to prevent overlapping.
• Fixed the barrel fires on the tent.
• Tweaked the lights for several buildings.
• Updated the icon for the tent building in the Build Menu.

Balance Adjustments

• Increased the amount of Plastic on all three difficulties.

- Easy should now have a massive increase in the amount especially. - Medium and Hard were also adjusted. - These adjustments included making the deposits themselves bigger so that they contain more plastic per deposit and also adding more deposits closer to the starting point.

• Decreased the number of pollution deposits when playing with Easy settings.
• The Colony Center and Headquarters buildings are now free to be built.
• Adjusted the values that affect leaving colonists as well.

- The minimum number of colonists considering leaving has been decreased. - The colonists will also wait slightly longer before deciding whether to leave or stay, giving you more time to react.

• Adjusted the resources needed to repair the Entertainment buildings.
• The Tailor and the Toolshop now produce resources at a slightly increased rate.
• The colonists now gather Metal Scrap and Concrete Rubble slightly faster.
• The Mess Hall building’s input and output resource values have been adjusted.

Game version

PC: 1.17.0.3533 Xbox: 1.17.0.175

General

Due to the massive changes to the game in this update, your saves from previous updates will not work after updating the game! We have gone through all the resources and buildings in the game and done a complete overhaul of how resources are used and gained in the game as well as moved some resources to be more a mid-game resource.

• In the beginning of a new game, you will now need only Wood and Plastic. The Stockpile can now be used for gathering only Wood from deposits.
• Wood is the same resource as Planks was before, renamed for consistency.
• Concrete can now be gathered with a dedicated building called Concrete Scavenger, which you will first have to unlock from the Tech Tree.
• The regular Scrapper used for gathering Metal will also now need to be unlocked from the Tech Tree.
• The Metal and Concrete deposits should now be a bit further away from the starting point and the smaller Concrete deposits have been completely removed.
• Buildings will now use resources more based on the stage of the game you are able to unlock them.
• Early game buildings will require only Wood and Plastic but as you progress through the game, you will need Metal, Concrete, and other resources as before to build the more advanced structures. Some resources will no longer be used as construction materials at all.
• The amount of resources needed to construct different buildings have been increased however so have the production rates of all buildings as well as the amounts of resources found in different deposits.
• We have also gone through the resources found in different locations on the World Map and balanced them to match these changes.
• You will not be able to find locations with basic resources such as Wood or Plastic anymore on the World Map.
• Societies will however now have some of the basic resources on offer from time to time, making them a more infinite source of the basic resources.
• The Logging Camp building now uses Wood to create Firewood instead of gathering Firewood from the trees around the colony.

Resource Outposts have also been added to the game.

• These Outposts work similarly to the Research Outposts, collecting resources from the locations in their sector and sending them automatically back to your colony.
• You can spot the resource locations on the World Map from the noticeably different floater on top of the locations. Regular locations will still have the circle shape, Outpost locations will have the cog-shaped floater.
• The Resource Outposts can now be used to produce resources on the World Map without needing to assign colonists to this production. You will be able to produce Fuel, Fun boxes, and other resources for your colonists.
• With the addition of the Resource Outposts, some resources can no longer be produced in the colony.
• You will need to create Outposts to the World Map to be able to produce the following resources for your colonists: - Superior Tools, - Superior Clothing, - Automatic Rifles, - Rare Metals.
• The tier 3 items have been removed from the recipe selection of relevant buildings and the Magnetic Separator building and its deposits have been removed from the game completely.
• These resources can still be offered for trade by the various societies in the World Map.

With these massive changes to how resources are being used and produced in the game, we have also reworked the Tech Tree entirely.

• While still having five categories, most of these categories are completely new and the location of different techs has changed.
• The Food category contains techs that help you keep your colonists fed and well-nourished.
• The Resources category will have all the techs you need to gather and produce various resources for your colonists to utilize.
• All techs you need for improving how your colony functions as a whole can be found in the Infrastructure category of the Tech Tree. This category also contains the techs required for unlocking energy production for example.
• The Community category is where you will find the techs that help you keep your colonists happy and your colony running smoother.
• The Safety category contains the techs you need for ensuring the safety and health of your colonists.
• The costs of each tech have also been rebalanced as have the times it takes to research each tech.
• Some buildings that were previously immediately available have also been added to the tech tree instead.
• For example, the Tailor and the Toolshop must first be researched from the Tech Tree before they can be built.
• Some techs were also removed - mostly as these were considered to be unnecessary after the changes to the entire game.
• The techs unique for each ideology have also been changed. - The Survivalist ideology is now more focused on basic survival and best for colonies that can do more with less. - The Industrialist ideology is for a more resource production-oriented type of gameplay. - The Protector ideology is suitable for those who want to take the best care of their colonists. - We have also removed the need to unlock different decorations from different techs.
• Decorations will now be unlocked by gaining Prestige in the game through Milestones. You can check your current score by opening the Milestones menu.
• Whenever you reach a high enough score to unlock more decorations, you should see a green plus icon in the Build Menu button as well as the Decorations category and the newly unlocked decorations themselves.
• The Tech Tree button will also show an indicator once all techs in the queue have been researched.

The Happiness system of the game has also been completely reworked.

• Previously your colonists would visit an Entertainment building to gain happiness on a personal level. While the game still checks the personal levels of each individual colonist, the Entertainment buildings now affect the entire colony as a whole, increasing the overall happiness.
• Each Entertainment building will increase the overall Happiness level of your colony by a set amount, visible in the building UI as well as the Build Menu. Each will also give you a small uniqueness bonus the first time they are built.
• New buildings have also been added to the game to give you more variety for your colony. - The Botanic Garden will provide your colonists a serene place to calm themselves in the hectic colony. - The Brawl Pit will offer your colonists a way to let off some steam. - The Stormdome, which replaces the old Arena, is the ultimate fighting arena for your colonists. - The Shrine gives your colonists a place to stop by and exercise their spiritual side. - The Public House is a great place for your colonists to have fun, form social bonds and enjoy a refreshment.
• With this new change with the buildings affecting the entire colony, the colonists no longer need to physically visit the building to gain the happiness bonus from it.
• This also means that colonists will no longer go to Entertainment buildings to recharge after a long day of work as they did before.
• In case your colony sinks into despair and your colonists are unhappy for too long, they will start considering leaving your colony. You will always get a notification for this situation which should give you some time to try and make the colony a happier place. You can do this by building more Entertainment buildings or improving the conditions your colonists are living in currently.
• The Happiness level also affects the birthrate in your colony. At a neutral level, the rate is the same as before. Happy colonists will have an increased rate and sad colonists will have a decreased rate.

The scouting done on the World Map has been changed so that it will take time-based on the max Action Points of the Specialist performing the action.

• The action itself will not be instant as it was before, but instead, take at least one cycle of Action Points being refilled.
• If a Specialist has a low amount of Action Points, scouting can take even longer.
• Only one specialist at a time can scout a specific sector, so adding more Specialists is not possible.
• We have implemented new universal buttons to the building info panel. - The Repair button is now greyed out instead of hidden on buildings that cannot be repaired at that moment. - If a building has an unlockable (but not yet unlocked) upgrade in the tech tree, the upgrade button will be greyed out instead of hidden. - Different UI panels in the colony can no longer be dragged up and down the screen.

Gameplay

• Selecting a Specialist from the Specialist Menu with a single click will no longer focus the camera to the location of the Specialist. - A single click will only select the Specialist, the camera will remain in its current position. - Double-clicking on the Specialist will now focus the camera instead.
• The Healing Outpost is now used as an action instead of the Specialist simply standing on top of it. This will now prevent the Specialist is ready -notification from being shown every turn for a Specialist who is still being healed.
• Resources can now be brought from several different storage buildings to the production buildings. Previously these buildings would require the resources for production to all be in the same storage for them to be utilized. This change now fixes this issue and allows for smoother production.
• The old type of combat at the gate has been removed. - This feature was not working as we wanted it to work and did not give our players a proper chance to react to the attackers, so the phase of combat at the gate has been removed completely. - If an event occurs at your gate that results in combat, the attackers will immediately be in your colony, instead of at the gate. - This has also allowed us to balance the groups attacking your colony better.
• The maximum health of Specialists has been changed for different types of specialists. - The Fighter specialists will still have 100 as their maximum health. - Scavengers and Scouts will now have 90 as their maximum health. - Scientists now have 80 as their maximum health.
• The intro has been changed so that you are given first a smaller area where to place your campsite. After it has been built, a bigger portion of the colony will be instantly scouted. - The setup phase is also shorter now so that the flare will be automatically shot after a shorter time than before. - The game can now also be saved and loaded during the intro phase.
• The option to change the safe area size has been added to the General tab of the Settings in the Main Menu.
• Some changes were made to how the Hire a Specialist button works. - The cooldown of the event now starts only if a Specialist was hired. - The Specialist offered by this event will not change immediately if the button is pressed, the Specialist is ignored, and then the button is pressed again. - Also fixed an issue that caused the wrong portrait to be shown in the panel after pressing Hire a Specialist with having another specialist selected.
• Flax can now be grown in open fields instead of only in Greenhouses. It is also available immediately at the start of the game.
• Starting populations in all three pregame choices have been increased slightly.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the game to be broken on load if the game was saved with a broken Scout Tower in the colony.
• Colonists that arrive after the flare has been shot can now have currency already with them.
• Colonists arriving from Survivor Groups can now have currency with them.
• Wild animals in the colony that are guarding a specific deposit will now be highlighted when the deposit is selected.
• The Build Menu will now show the amount of available prefab buildings in relevant categories.
• Fixed an issue that caused the combat on the World Map to never end when a Specialist was commanded to the combat after another Specialist had died.
• The amount of graves in the Cemetery building should increase and decrease based on the number of colonists buried in the building.
• Wild animals should no longer attack your colonists from the fog.
• Settlers can no longer be created from dead Specialists.
• Unrefined resources will now decay from the colony instead of remaining on the ground forever or being brought to a storage building. - This fix will affect the Metal Debris and Plastic Trash resources that are gathered from the deposits around the colony and brought back to the relevant buildings. - This will also affect the Logs that were previously brought back to the storage buildings but never refined from there.
• Bandits or hostile animals should no longer attack fields.
• Open fields should now always be visible when being placed in the colony.
• Fixed an issue with the Rat Swarm disaster that would cause it to appear on all buildings if the game was saved and loaded while it was occurring. This fix will also affect the Space Junk disaster that would previously disappear if the game was saved and loaded while it was falling.
• Work area indicators will now show a tooltip when hovered over.
• Fields placed on low fertility positions in the colony will now show a condition indicating this. You can also no longer select seeds for fields with a 0% efficiency.
• Specialists can now be sent to the World Map even while the game is paused. Previously selecting the Send to World Map option required the game to be unpaused for the Specialist to appear in the World Map.
• The Build Outpost button should now be greyed out if the Settler is currently in an unsuitable sector.
• Underground deposits will no longer play their discover animation every time after the game is saved and loaded after they have been discovered in the colony.
• Newly unlocked buildings will now show an indicator in the Build Menu. - This indicator is also shown in the relevant category. - The indicator should disappear after the building hovers over.
• The top bar numbers will now be formatted differently to ensure all amounts fit the allocated space properly. When the amount is over 10 000, it will now be shown as 10,0k.
• The event visuals will no longer be visible before the actual event animations have been played.
• World Map action floater (spinning arrows around the location floater) will no longer be shown until the Specialist has reached the location and actually started the action.
• The game should now return you straight back to the World Map from the Society page if you opened it by selecting the Society from the World Map.
• The Warehouse can now be built only after the Gate has been built.
• Enemies that attack your colony will now have a small highlight when they are spawned.
• Attack particles coming from the hostile animals should now be shown in the correct place instead of the middle of the colony. This issue caused for example the green goo the Sandworm spits out to be shown in the middle of the colony instead of where the Sandworm is spitting it to.

Graphics

• Updated the visual look of the event windows.
• Event artwork has been polished.
• Updated the visual look of the menus that pause the game.
• Added a new animation for the scaffolding that appears around construction zones when they are being built.
• Colonist needs are now shown on two rows to ensure texts fit the allocated space better.
• Added particles to the Healing outpost to indicate when it is in use.
• Added missing contamination animations to several buildings.
• The icicles on the Maintenance Depot are no longer misplaced during winters.
• Updated the resource display style of the scavenge and research panels on the World Map.
• Updated the look of the Medic Tent as it was too similar to the Red Cross symbol.
• Added the destruction animation to the Skinner Building.
• Minor fx tweaks to the pollution deposits to make them more visible in the colony.
• Fixed the spray effect of the irrigated fields.

Balance Adjustments

• All of the different resource costs around the game have been balanced to fit the new resource chain. - All buildings cost more to build but produce more than before. - Repair costs have also been increased to match the adjustments.
• The amount of currency that can be found in locations on the World Map has been increased.
• Colonist trait effects have been adjusted to match the new Happiness system.
• The Campsite and the Colony Center scout their areas a little faster now.
• The colonists’ carry capacity has been increased.
• Reduced the combat damage resistance of some buildings. - This means that they can now get broken a bit more easily. - All buildings should now have a more consistent resistance to combat damage.
• The Guard Post building will now do slightly less damage to its attackers.
• The Shotgun and the Assault Rifle will now do slightly less damage to hostiles.
• Resources required to make different medicines in the Medical Lab building have been changed.
• The Water Well now produces slightly more water.
• Catastrophes are now a bit longer in duration.

Greetings, Survivors! We’ve added a ton of new content and revamped the old in many updates, but this is hands down the biggest update during the whole Early Access period. We’ve changed or reworked the production chains, resource requirements, gameplay progression, the tech tree, rewritten events and quests, implemented a new happiness system, and added new buildings to push the game towards our original vision. All this has also reshaped the progression, which gives more clear goals and a stronger sense of advancing from one game phase to another. These changes are so fundamental and significant, so unfortunately the old saves won’t work with this latest update. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/6e753fc6cc6fc7744c97951ab0b9f93fb9312b8e.png Our goal has always been to make a colony builder set in a post-apocalyptic world where the colony is built on the ruins of the old collapsed civilization, our civilization. Resources there are scarce and survivors need to use whatever is available. In this game, it is not enough to just stay put and try to survive, but also push further and explore the wasteland around the colony. Survival is not only about surviving through the day, but about learning to thrive in the devastated world. The people living in the colony are survivors of the cataclysmic events that took place a couple of decades back. When the game starts they are living on the brink of a new age ready to start a new beginning. Ready to build a new civilization on the ruins of the old. This is the story of one of the first colonies to do that and the player has the control to shape this story into something great. To build the first great colony into the wasteland, a beacon of hope for anyone looking for a place to call home. This update focuses heavily on changes that make the game function more on a high level where micromanagement is only optional. To mention all the changes would be too much here, but for instance, it means that scaling the production is made by constructing more buildings, or world map outposts. To match the need for more workers by increasing the population can be controlled through player actions and cross dependencies to other features. Fighting enemies is no longer done only by ordering individual specialists, but by building enough guard posts to the right places and sounding the alarm at the right time. Or even paying resources to bandits that threaten your colony. With these changes come also new challenges. Happiness is not only a problem for individual colonists but a challenge to overcome for the entire colony as the population grows. Next, we take a look at the biggest changes in this update. But as always, all changes in the update will be listed in the changelog releasing later this week. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/a6118246d9d3e5936879a388b5f99d7199c55877.png The Prosperity update includes a complete rework to the resource system in both how much you produce and consume, as well as how various resources are tiered and introduced in the game through progression. The increased quantity of resources helps to achieve more balanced gameplay, which also scales with the population and can be controlled by building more or less of the production buildings based on the current need. Another aspect is the more clear division between the colony and the world map as all basic resources are no longer available outside the colony. On the other hand, some of the more refined items, or advanced resources can be acquired only from the world map. These are significant changes, so we’ll be fine-tuning this part of the game also in the future. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/d9b8a18aad693d992226b29817438c90961bcacd.png The changes to resource chains have an effect on the construction requirements as well. Almost all buildings have been updated to match these changes and can be roughly divided into three main categories, which are the early, mid, and late-game buildings. In the early game, you’ll start with just wood and plastic. Metal becomes essential only when starting to move from the basic survival of the early game to mid-game challenges with more advanced and permanent structures. While energy requirements have remained roughly the same, the demand for concrete has been moved forward to a later part of the game, where it creates the foundation for a thriving community and allows you to build the most advanced structures in the aftermath. Also, the production of concrete has changed so it is no longer scavenged with a stockpile. Instead, it needs a new building called Concrete Scavenger that has the right tools to extract blocks of concrete from the ruins in the colony. Everything from construction costs, map generation, and the tech tree have been updated to support this shift. For example, metal and concrete deposits are now a bit further away, prompting you to expand into new areas once your tech level affords it. So scouting the colony for the next potential production area remains as important as ever. The changes are not limited only to the colony as mentioned earlier since some items can now be produced only on the world map using the new Scavenger Outposts. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/1f06741301a8ba91c8d1a8eddc7ebb334c6c2a70.png This new Outpost type works similar to the Research Outpost, but instead of science points, it collects resources and sends them back to the colony. The locations with a distinctive cog-shaped icon can be scavenged only by using the outpost. Note that Resource outposts won’t scavenge other locations in the sector, so they need to be emptied using specialists as before. A Resource Outpost requires no colonists to run and will provide you with high-tier items like Fun boxes, Superior Tools, and Automatic Rifles. Rare metals have been moved to the world map, so look out for those resource locations, or available trade options with other societies when setting up your own component and electronics production. Consequently, rare metal deposits and the Magnetic Separator have been removed from the game. The tech tree has been fully reorganized for the final time with the goal to achieve a more linear and clear progression. Critical technologies are always on the main path and are impossible to miss. There are still cross dependencies between the branches, so hopping from one branch to another is needed. For instance, all branches have buildings that require energy or construction materials that must be produced with a building from another branch of the tech tree. The rework has affected the locations of individual techs in the tech tree and renaming the main categories. The 130+ techs are now categorized under Food, Resources, Community, Infrastructure, and Safety. The ideology selections have also been updated with clearer themes of Survivalist, Industrialist, and Protector. The Survivalist takes advantage of the surrounding nature while the Industrialist can boost production in several structures. Protector is all about the health and safety of your people from medical care to weapons production. Decorations are now unlocked as you play instead of from the tech tree. One very requested addition is the icon in the build menu that appears when new construction options become available. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/1ce6b5088125a23086598e12aac04d30160c7541.png The entire happiness system has been redone as well and comes into play when the colony starts growing. As the colony grows and the basic needs of water, shelter, and food are taken care of, your population starts craving for something more into their lives. Something that brings them joy and relaxation outside of mere survival. The old system of colonists getting a small personal happiness boost from visiting an entertainment building has been removed and replaced with a new one. Now the need for entertainment grows as the population grows. To satisfy the need for entertainment the colony needs buildings that provide these services. Failing to provide enough entertainment leads to colonists not being happy in the colony and eventually leaving it in the hope for a better life somewhere else. One more thing worth mentioning is that colonists appreciate diversity, so building only one type of entertainment is not as effective as a more diverse selection of different facilities. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/8e770da7d4f32da2272aa82dbff4ecf0cbc46e50.png To support this change a collection of new entertainment buildings have been added to the tech tree to further personalize the colony. In total there are now nine different buildings that produce various forms of entertainment. A more peaceful colony can enjoy the botanical gardens and shrines while one with a more aggressive preference might build fighting pits and the fabled Stormdome. Either way, the happy colonists have a positive effect on the birth rate helping the colony to grow and thrive. One huge task during the last few months has been the work we’ve done with all the events and quests in the game. They have gone through many changes and are more focused on telling something about the world and its history. They still have the same familiar themes in them, but there is also more information about great events that have shaped the world and the people in it. Along with the bigger changes, a myriad of smaller improvements have been added, too many to list here. Sector scouting speed is now based on the Action Point value of a specialist. Good scouts will uncover a sector in 12 hours while slower specialists will take a little longer. Specialists are now selected with a single press on the specialist menu and the camera is focused on with a double-press. The preparation phase prior to colonists arriving has been shortened as specialists arrive together with the colonists. The task that remains, in the beginning, is to set up the campsite and place the available prefabs around it. All event windows have received a facelift making them more akin to quest windows. Specialist max health is now varied and based on their archetype. A new scaffolding animation shows better which buildings are about to be built and when they’re done. Check the detailed patch notes for all the changes and improvements. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37783056/d14def498f83163a91bae4433074338bc8d22144.png And that’s it! The Prosperity update is a big departure from some of the core features you’ve gotten used to, so we’re extremely interested in hearing what you think of the changes. But we hope you’ll be happy with how it all fits together in the grand scheme of things. Until next time, play games and stay safe!